Wordless Wednesday - Frosted

Sequestered, Week 238 (CCXXXVIII)

Yesterday was cold, and there was frost in the park when we went out for our morning potter through fields and hedgerows and old trees. At nightfall, I carried my few remaining pots of herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, marjoram and oregano) in from the deck to spend their night indoors and away from killing frosts.

This morning, the temperature is well above zero, and it is is raining gently in the darkness. I have just toted my aromatic tubs out to the deck again, and my doddery knees protest the damp. Now it is time for a general towelling off and a mug of something hot, a slice or two of toasted sourdough which I will have to share.

Beau went outside (grudgingly) and is now curled up in the warm and dry looking morose. Since there is more rain in the cards, we will probably be spending today indoors for the most part, beakers of goodness, something wonderful to read, lighted candles and cooking pots. 

The oscillating weather is perplexing, but at least we are not shoveling snow. 

Wordless Wednesday - Frosted

Sequestered, Week 235 (CCXXXV)

Sequestered, Week 186 (CLXXXVI)

Wordless Wednesday - Frosted

Frost, Field and Turning Maples

As her appointed time draws to a close, autumn swirls her gypsy skirts and does a last high kick, shakes her tambourine furiously, gives a tad-da with her arms upraised. She lets the great wide world know that she may be leaving, but she will be back.

Every year, a few village maples add their own dazzling touches to the performance in progress. Freewheeling creatures that they are, they do their own thing in their own way, and they do it in their own good time, long after their woody kin have fallen asleep for the winter. Scarlet, orange and gold leaves in November? Bring 'em on.

Scoured by the icy north wind, most of the other trees nearby have been bare and whiskery for several days, but the later turning sisters are standing their ground and putting on a grand show.  No supporting roles for these blithe spirits.

After putting the Samhain/Halloween clobber away for another year, I was feeling a little blue about the vanishing scarlets, oranges and golds. Ditto the ochres, the rusts and the coppery browns. Here's to the madcap, insouciant maple sisters. I needed this.

Frost and Morning Light

The Frosted Garden

Friday Ramble - Frost

This week's word seems to have been around forever, coming down to us from the Middle and Old English forst meaning "freezing, becoming frozen or extreme cold". There are Old Saxon, High German and Norse variants claiming the same ancestral roots, and there are the Proto Germanic frusta and Old High German vorst, both related to the old verb freosan meaning "to freeze". Somewhere back there are Old Saxon, Frisian and Dutch kindred, and at the root of it all, the PIE (Proto-Indo-European) form preus which seems to have described processes of both freezing and burning. Huh???

PIE is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family, thought to have been spoken from 4500 BC to 2500 BC (from the Late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age). The Proto-Indo-Europeans were most likely herding tribes who lived in the vast steppes north of the Black Sea., and while they left no written records, their language took root wherever they alighted during their migrations.  A fair bit is known about them from the archeological record, and their genetic markers can be seen in modern Europeans. Whenever I excavate a ramble word, remove its old and middle European trappings and discover its PIE roots, I am wrapped anew in reverence for words and language, for those who came before us and the commonalities of earthly existence going back to the beginning times.

A fine day is coming into being, skies in deep, vibrant shades of lavender, purple and gold. The sun has yet to rise, but geese are already flying up from the river and out to stubbly farm fields to feed. The air is filled with their joyous songs on this brisk morning in early November. There is frost on trees, cobblestones and roof tiles in the village; puddles and fallen leaves in the streets are outlined in ice, ditto the birdbaths in my garden. The Virginia creeper vines in local hedgerows seem undeterred by the night's plummeting temperatures, but they look as though their insouciance and jaunty stance is darned hard work.

The rose leaves in the garden are clad in frost this morning too, the crystals clearly defined and sparkling. Blue sky and silvery frost, russet and gold rose leaves dancing in the wind - who says there is no color about in late autumn and early winter? One has only to look, and the best time for looking is just as the sun is coming up over the trees.

Songs in a Different Key

Leaves crunching underfoot or rattling like sabres in in the wind, ice crystals limning cedar fence rails along the ridge, blowsy plumes of frosted grasses along the edge of the western field, stands of frozen reeds along the pond—all are fine representations of the season, plangent leitmotifs in the windy musical work that is late autumn. At this time of the year, the Two Hundred Acre Wood is an Aeolian harp, a vast musical instrument that only the wind can play.

The season marches onward, settling slowly, and with deep sighs, into the subdued tints of early winter: soft bronzes, creams, beiges and silvery greys, small splashes here and there of winey red, burgundy, russet, a midnight blue almost iridescent in its sheen and intensity, but oh so fragile.

Frost in the eastern Ontario highlands makes itself known as sugary drifts over old wood and on fallen leaves almost transparent in their lacy textures. An owl's artfully barred feather lies in thin sunlight under the fragrant cedars down by the spring and seems to be giving off a graceful, pearly light of its own. The weedy residents of field and fen cavort in fringed and tasseled hats.

One needs another lens and tuning for late autumn and early winter, a different sort of vision, a song in a different key. The senses perform a seasonal shift of their own, moving carefully into the consideration of things small, still and muted, but complete within themselves and perfect, even when they are cold and wet and tattered.

There is light in the world, even in these dark times, and I have to remember that. My camera and lens never forget, and out in the woods, they drink in light like nectar. I am thankful that they do and that they remind me at every turning along on the trail—we are made of star stuff. We live in a sea of light.

Wordless Wednesday - Shining Through

Wordless Wednesday - Touched

By Winter Adorned

Wordless Wednesday - Touched

Field and Frost

Wordless Wednesday - Adorned

Artfully Suspended

 

The Frosted Garden

And so it begins. . .

And so it begins. . . There was snow on the deck when we pulled the draperies open in early morning. A bitter north wind roared through the trees and cavorted across the roof of the little blue house in the village, dislodging frozen leaves and twigs. Frost crystals were piled up like stalagmites on the few remaining daisies in the garden.

In such weather, we need heavier gear for our morning walks, I in my tattered navy parka with its deep hood, and Beau in an eye grabbing shade of scarlet fleece.

All this is for a few days, then there will be warmer weather for the rest of the week, starting tomorrow. We will be back in lighter clobber for a while, just long enough to get used to it. After that, a return to parkas, mukluks, toques and mittens.

November is a time of whispering and rustling and crackling change, of whiskery trees rattling their bones in the wind, of frost on the roof and leaves crunching underfoot. There are balmier days now and then, but winter is on its way.

There has been nothing but cloud here for days. Oh for a little sunlight.