Saturday, November 14, 2015

Time to leave





It’s 11:30 at night, and already Orion has cleared the trees behind the house and is well on his way to the upright position – sign of fall marching on towards winter.


The snow lasted through the week, only to melt in one glorious, mild and sunny day the following Saturday. It gave me time to clean up the last flower pots and flower beds, put the tools away and cover the lemon balm with spruce boughs in the hope that it might survive its third winter. 


I woke up on Sunday to grey skies with clouds almost touching the ground, a typical November day by German standards if not by ours. It didn’t take long for the drizzle to change to snow, and by late afternoon the ground was white once again, with total accumulations of about ten centimetres again. Still, it is by far not as cold as it could be; most days the temperatures still hover around the freezing mark. 


The birds found the feeder in no time at all, and I have been enjoying the busy comings and goings of chickadees, blue jays, downy and hairy woodpeckers and, to my great delight, even a flock of pine grosbeaks. They must have decided to check out the alternate food source, since I have watched them hanging from spruce cones in the trees around the yard, making lots of noise when they move from one to the other.



As much as I enjoy the quieter world of late fall, the darkening days with opportunity to do things inside, the time has come again to leave it all behind for the southern hemisphere. Tomorrow at this time we will be on a plane from Toronto to Santiago, and for the next month we’ll embark on another South American adventure. We plan to explore parts of Chile, northern Argentina and Bolivia, and this time we will not stray from our plan to visit the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat right across the Chilean border in Bolivia. We had thought about going there two years ago already, but I felt a strong need for lush and green then after travelling through arid country for quite some time, and we went to the Bolivian pampa instead.

Other than that our plans will unfold as we go. I booked a hostel in Santiago for the first night, but we will likely move on from there on the next day already.



I plan to keep my travel blog updated when time and internet allow for it. Here is the link:  

Monday, November 2, 2015

And suddenly it's November







If this were a script for a play on the twelve months it couldn’t have been more perfectly written. Yesterday, the last day of a glorious, glowing, golden October, we realized with surprise that it was warm enough to have lunch out on the deck on the west side of the house – never mind that I found this morning when I checked the weather data that yesterday’s high had reached all of 8.5 degrees Celsius... It certainly felt a lot warmer with the sun as high in the sky as it will get at this time of year, and the single wasp tasting first honey, then apricot jam must have been under the same illusion.

Today, the tall spruce sticking out above the poplar grove I can see from my bed was doing its dance in the dim light of morning: windy, I thought. No sign of the bright light of Venus holding court with Jupiter and Mars, the amazing morning display of the last couple of weeks: the sky was grey, with clouds hanging low, and when I looked out to the west I couldn’t see the neighbour’s field across the road, shrouded in dense fog. Nothing could have spelled ‘November’ more clearly, the break from the day, the month before not been more decisive. 

It is strange how a day like this can create a sense of anticipation, even bordering on happiness in me, especially considering how soon I tire of it. For today, however, it felt just right, fitting. The bitter aroma of fallen leaves, their thick, soft carpet inviting me to shuffle my feet in them, to make a trail soon closing over again, the mist clinging to eye lashes and skin, the sound of drops heavily hitting the ground after slowly letting go of the branches they caused to sparkle even in the pearly-grey light of a sunless day – maybe it is a remnant of childhood memory, maybe the feeling that it is good and right that the year should now be closing in on itself. 

The fog lifted in the course of the morning, but intermittent drizzle stayed with us all day, and my knees got totally soaked and cold on my walk along the fence line of the home quarter with Leo late this afternoon. Magpies and crows are the birds most visible in this monochrome landscape, but in the trees around the house the hoarse calls of blue jays and happy chatter of chickadees remind us that there is more variety left than that. 

Sometime after dark the quiet patter of light rain on the roof became even quieter, ominously so. A glance out of the window confirmed the suspicion: it had started to snow. Now, four hours later, the layer of snow has grown to maybe five centimetres, and it shows no sign of quitting. Yesterday’s meal on the deck already seems far, far away.




Spoiled by weeks upon weeks of beautiful fall weather it sometimes felt as if this could last forever, and I took my time harvesting what was left in the garden. Remembering years when I had to wear gloves digging carrots, shivering through hasty retrieval efforts, almost needing to use a crowbar to remove leeks from already frost-hard soil I had at least taken advantage of an especially warm, dry afternoon a couple of weeks ago to harvest them. The only thing left now are five red cabbages and one huge white one, probably weighing in at about six kilograms. I better bring them in now, before the snow is joined by harder frost. Kale, too, is still waiting patiently. 


Now the rabbit living in the woods beside the garden will be even more thankful for the little cabbages regrown on the stalks of cabbages harvested much earlier in the fall. It seems Leo didn't make a huge effort to keep it from testing them already. 



Aware of the extraordinary gift I was receiving way past the time I could reasonably have expected to I kept picking little bouquets of sweet peas or calendula, corn flowers, Siberian wallflower and alyssum. That, too, will be over now, to be replaced by dry grasses, twigs and seed heads. There is a time for everything. 

 
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Now, a few hours later, it has become very clear that this is the time for snow, possibly even the beginning of winter. This is what we woke up to this morning:






Time to bring out the bird feeder ...