every day is a good day
Every so often a sunset comes along that makes you stop what you are doing. This evening was such a sunset.
The clouds over the Chuckanuts were on fire when I went to the Post Office this evening.
I pulled off the road three times to take it all in. And by the time I arrived at the Post Office the show was over. The sun dipped behind the horizon and extinguished the fires in the clouds.
After the storm of Sunday and Monday, yesterday was so bright and blue it made the previous days of stormy weather seem like a dream. Did it really rain so much? Did the roads flood and the hillsides collapse?
A few cottonwoods still wave their gold leaves against the blue sky. During the windy days their leaves rained down like confetti.
We didn’t escape unscathed. A beloved redwood snapped in two. I had visions of the tree reaching 300 feet and higher, provided I live to be two hundred or so. The redwood will send up another shoot and eventually reach the sky. It may still happen.
The chickens enjoyed a break from the rainy days. It’s rained every day in November until yesterday. They can finally forage without getting wet. Even the ducks were sunning themselves on a sunny bank of the pond yesterday. I guess the weather can get too wet even for them.
Potatoes, leek, and kale. They are late fall and winter staples. I decided to leave the potatoes in the ground instead of digging them all up. It’s an experiment to see if the ground is as good a storage place for them as anywhere. I suspect that they’ll be fine through December, which is about when I will have dug them all up. By mid January or February, they will probably be sending out roots and become inedible as they start to grow. Potatoes turn into this odd glassy, crisp texture when they start to grow. Not pleasant to eat at all.
As mornings turn cold and frosty, the kale becomes ever sweeter. Kale picked on a snow day is about the best kale you’ll ever eat. Sugar is the kale’s antifreeze, so mid-winter kale, picked on an icy day, is comfort food.
The cottonwoods have turned. As colorful as they are, standing tall against the sky, they aren’t an honest depiction of what this season is like. To convey this season, I should post pictures of near total darkness. It’s dark in the morning. It’s dark by late afternoon. It’s dark most days with heavy clouds obscuring the mountains and the sun.
One last Dahlia adds some brightness. Each day is darker than the day before, but in just five and a half weeks the days will start to lengthen. We humans can’t help but have at least one toe in the future. The swans are back, foraging in the fields. They just arrived, but are some of them already planning their trips back north? Are some counting the days until they can go home?
Snow is back on the foothills. On cloudy days, it’s impossible to see how low or how high up the hills the snow is. But when the clouds part, it’s easy to picture foxes playing in fresh snow high up on the foothills.
If you’re not satisfied with enough, you’ll never be satisfied with more. There are a number of variations of this saying by Epicurus. The insight is as meaningful now as when Epicurus said it thousands of years ago.
One potato satisfies me, so when I bring in a basket of potatoes from the garden, I have no problems being equally satisfied. And there is a fat leak as well.
The first frost of the season happened this morning. Each fall, the first frost of the season is as delightful as all the first frosts of years past. They are a sharp reminder that winter is coming. Touch the frosty grass and your fingers sting from the cold. First frost mornings are transformative.
Each day brings brighter colors. The pear leaves are at their peak. This year, the fall colors are unfolding over many weeks. Many trees have yet to turn. Others have nearly dropped all their leaves.
Wednesday afternoon I saw a few filaments of snow geese in the sky. Thursday on our way home from running errands, the snow geese fell out of the sky like snow. The arrival of the snow geese marks the beginning of winter in a way. Soon the swans will follow.
Watching snow geese fly in from the north is a spectacle. Just when you think the last of them have made it, more strands of snow geese, stretching for miles appear against the gray clouds. Hour by hour, they keep flying in and landing, until the fields are as white as snow.
The swans are probably glad the snow geese have left the tundra. Until they join them in a few weeks, they can enjoy peace and quiet. If you like the hustle and bustle of the city, snow geese are your birds. They can’t shut up. If you’re a snow goose, you don’t know what it is to be still and hear nothing.
