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Category: Reflections
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The Gods are Furious
The best antidote to dreary, November weather? Go outside! Enjoy life on the wild side.
I was biking home from delivering eggs to Tweets in Edison when I saw someone pointing their camera up at the sky. “What are they photographing?” I wondered. I looked up and slammed on the brakes. Oh, wow! The clouds were in full boil. The gods must be furious. We don’t think such things when we see stormy clouds, but it’s easy to imagine raging deities when you see such awesome clouds.
So go outside on these dark, dreary days. You could probably write an epic imaging what the gods are doing to make the clouds seethe so much.
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Art on the Move
Art happens all the time. On a sunny November day, turning mimosa leaves scream art as they sway in a gentle breeze.
On the way home from a run to the post office, I was stopped by a mile long, mobile art installation. At the bottom of Bow Hill is a ribbon of steel stretching from Vancouver, BC, all the way to Seattle and to cities far beyond. Hour by hour, art installations lumber by.
There is so much art to see every day, I’m surprised Burlington Northern Railroad hasn’t installed viewing stands next to the rail crossings. They could be outdoor art museums. Do you need to take a break from the day’s frustrations? Stop, and enjoy the art pieces that roll by every so often.
The variety of art pieces slipping by is impressive. They slip by too quickly to see who the artist is. Did an artist in Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, or Los Angeles create this Octopus? The railcar carrying the Octopus was a TTX railcar, a Pennsylvania company which sends railcars all over Canada, the USA, and Mexico. The Octopus may have been painted in Veracruz! By the time the installations stop, how many people will enjoy the pieces, how many cities will the installations roll through?
At home, old Billy looks majestic on this sunny autumn day. He’s 7 ½ years old now.
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October Blue
The waning sun casts October skies with their own shade of blue. I suppose if I spent all my time outdoors, I could tell what week of the year it was just by the hue of the sky or the angle of the tree shadows. It’s said that many animals are sensitive to the length of daylight. For example, hens supposedly need fourteen hours of daylight to lay eggs. But maybe, it’s not the length of day but the color of the sky that they respond to.
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On Fire
All it takes is for the clouds to part and let the sun shine to set everything on fire. Next to the pond, the snowbell fruits dangle like Christmas tree ornaments. Paint them different colors, and you’d have an outdoors Christmas tree.
Nearby the snowbell tree, the holly trees are waiting for migrating birds to snatch their orange berries. One migrating bird can eat a berry and deposit its seed far, far away. Who knows, by now, this holly tree may have children hundreds of miles away.
In the garden the magenta spreen is growing like crazy. I’m running low on greens to take to the two remaining Alger Sunday Markets. This weekend I’ll have plenty of fresh magenta spreen to offer.
I’ve let a few Swiss chard do their thing. This one is big enough to feed an elephant. The leaves are so large, one leaf could feed a family. The spitzkohl, pointy cabbage, are nearly done. You won’t find a tastier cabbage than spitzkohl. I don’t know why the stores don’t have bins of them. Well, I do know. Their odd shapes make them awkward to pick by machine, hard to pack, and cumbersome to handle. Not being efficient and easy to process is a death knell for any vegetable. Our relentless striving to be ever more efficient will drive us all to extinction.
And once we are all gone, who will pause to enjoy the beauty of autumn maples?
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October Wind
Before today’s storm, we were able to gather most of the Asian pears off the tree. This year was a bumper crop and they are at their peak right now, sweet, juicy, and crunchy. I’ll take some to this weekend Alger’s Sunday Market, if tomorrow’s storm doesn’t blow us all away.
Today’s storm was strong enough to knock down a few trees across the driveway. We needed a chainsaw to get out to run an errand.