Category: Reflections

  • First Day of Winter

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    According to the old Japanese calendar, this year, November 7, is the first day of winter. The year is divided into 24 solar terms, with each term having a name. This year, November 7 through 21 is considered the beginning of winter. The next solar term from November 22 through December 6, Light Snow, is the period when snow starts falling.

    For marking the season, I like the old Japanese calendar. Using the equinoxes and solstices makes the beginning of the seasons to late. The winter solstice falls on December 21 this year. By then, it seems winter has been with us for sometime. It makes more sense to use the equinoxes and solstices as the middle of the seasons, not the beginning.

    It’s a beautiful start to winter here. After a furious wind and rain storm yesterday, the day started out clear and cool. A perfect way to begin winter.

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  • Waterland

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    The fall rains have brought back water land. The ditches are flowing again after a long, dry summer. From now until next summer, the sound of rushing water will fill the air. Like many, I find the sound of flowing water comforting. Now, as I bike around, running errands, everywhere I go, I can hear the soothing sounds of water cascading over the rocks.

    This isn’t a gushing, mountain stream. This is a ditch alongside a busy, country road.

    The next thing to look forward to is the arrival of the swans. They should appear out of the northern sky any day now.

  • Green and Gold

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    This is why Washington is called the Evergreen state. Green and blue are the predominate colors here. “Shades of Green” would make a fitting title for a novel which takes place here.

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    Though this time of year, especially when there is a setting sun, gold fills the forest. Nature goes crazy with its paint brushes this time of year. In dying, the leaves remind us that they are spun out of spring and summer sunlight. Many of these beautiful, golden leaves, will end up in the vegetable fields and become the vegetables we enjoy. The leaves will also feed a host of bugs and worms the chickens crave.

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  • On a Rainy Day

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    We woke up to steady rains. The long, cool, rainy season has begun. On a cool, wet morning, Lucky takes her chicks into the protected chicken yard for some breakfast. Watching the devotion a mother hen has for her chicks is inspiring. Until the chicks are big enough to be on their own, she will watch over them continuously. Where does this love and devotion come from? It is instinctual as hens raised without a mother, and having no training on how to raise a brood, can make excellent mothers. How does such complex behavior get passed through DNA and then expressed? How does a hen know to sit 21 or more days on her eggs to make them hatch? How does she know how to talk to them, how are the chicks able to understand her words? I’ve yet to find a scientific article that explains how such complex behavior gets passed down from generation to generation.

    Having done a fair amount of programming in the past, I’m inclined to imagine that there are sequences of DNA where these instructions are encoded. But biology is infinitely more complex than software. It’s no doubt much more complicated than that.

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    It’s just a matter of time before the most momentous event of the year happens – the arrival of the swans. We divide the year into four seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter. But actually, the year in this valley can be divided into two main seasons. The season when the swans are here, and the season when they are gone. While the swans are here, it is cool and wet. When the swans are gone, it is warm and dry. Around November 1, they will start flying in by the thousands from their summer grounds in Alaska and Siberia.

    It makes you wonder which they prefer. Would they rather spend the year in the treeless tundra? Or do they prefer this forested land?

    When they waddle through the fields rooting for food, they look like herds of sheep. When they fly above, sometimes so close you can almost jump and touch them, they take your breath away.

    In the meantime, while I wait for the swans to fly in from the ocean, a cool, rainy day is a good day to bake a pie. Peeling and cutting apple, I end up with a bowlful of peels and trimmings. Everything that doesn’t end up in the pie is something the chickens relish. As soon as I toss the apple peelings and trimmings outdoors, Lucky and her chicks are having their desert. Ours comes out of the oven about an hour later.

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  • Surprises in the Forest

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    Making a trail in the woods using the bark of a tree wasn’t something I planned to do today. I was out in the woods chopping firewood. It was time to cut up a Maple log we had felled some time ago and left to dry. But as I was chopping it up, the bark peeled off in nice pieces, and they worked very well to line a trail.

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    Finding a delightful group of mushrooms was another forest surprise.

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