Sequestered, 368 (CCCLXVIII)

Thursday Poem - Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and
suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts,
celebrates, leaves a space. I begin
again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and
leaves, only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye

(from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems)

Happy New Year! 

Haud Hogmanay, Happy New Year

There is nothing like a festive tankard to start a new year, a lovely hot flagon of mulled wine with bits of fruit (oranges, cranberries and Meyer lemons), cinnamon sticks, a few cloves, and an anise star or two. I love those things. Yum.

Wishing you abundance, cheer and rude good health in 2026, wishing you a few festive beakers (or noggins or drams) too. Be warm and safe this evening, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing. Mind yourself!

May you find joy in your creations. May all your lessons be gentle. May fulfillment grace your life. May there be fine adventures on the road ahead. May every cup you hold in your hands contain a star or two and have a little light dancing in its depths. May good things come to you. Wander often, wonder always. Blessed be.

Trees of Gladness

Creeping Autumn

On our morning walks, there are clear signals that seasonal changes are in the air. The persistent strands of Virginia creeper wrapping old wooden fences and stone walls and draping themselves around trees and shrubs were green a few days ago, and this morning many look more like Yuletide (or Christmas) paper, red and green and silvery in the early light. Where their supporting masonry gets direct sunlight during the day and retains a little heat at night, the vines are keeping their green a little longer, but they too are thinking about changing their colors.

Oak leaves are lightly touched with the splendid rosy bronze tint they wear in late September and early October before falling to earth, and beech leaves are already edged in coppery red and cognac. Leaf by leaf and branch by branch, maple trees in the eastern Ontario highlands are turning red.

One of my forestry references identifies our native beeches as just "common beeches", but to my mind, there is nothing common about the beech sisters in the village with their majestic height, silvery bark, dense foliage and rounded crowns. They are magnificent, and that is that.

Part of me wants to dance about and applaud the cooler temperatures and burnished, glorious colors coming into their own. Another part of me is dismayed at the prospect of cold weather, short days and long nights, of frost and an early autumn this time around. Fall should not arrive until early October, and then it ought to hang about until at least the end of November. 

Please Mama, not yet........ Gift us with several more weeks of sun and warmth and gentle breezes, no ingathering and Arctic nights for a while longer.

Friday Ramble - Little Ordinaries of the Season

It's small things that engage one's attention at this time of year: fallen leaves like confetti on the dock at the lake, trees raining acorns and crabapples, sunflowers inclining their heads and sending thousands of seed children out into the world, damp furrows where veggies flowered, fruited and have been gathered in.

Trees in the garden were touched by cool fingers overnight, and their grip on summer’s foliage has loosened. The fallen leaves rustle wonderfully underfoot. Bergamots, mints and sages planted for the bees and butterflies have gone to seed, and fall bloomers are sporting buds. One artfully curving branch on the ash tree behind the potting shed has already turned brilliantly yellow.

In the park, beech leaves float down in burnished, windblown drifts and come to rest on the trail at our feet. Sunlight flickers through the overstory as though through clerestory windows, and the woods feel like a cathedral that goes on and on forever. I am reminded of something John Crowley wrote in his incandescent novel, Little, Big: "The further in you go, the bigger it gets."

September is only a few days away, and autumn is already in the air. The little ordinaries of this liminal time between the seasons conjure an earthy litany that is colourful and spicy on the tongue, touched with a leaf-dusty fragrance that follows us wherever we totter and shamble and lurch.

Swallows are congregating on telephone lines before flying south, and skeins of geese move to and fro between rivers and farm fields. A new generation of monarch butterflies is testing its wings before flying south. Soon, the loons on our favorite lake will be calling goodbye as they head for warmer moorings, and the great herons will not be far behind them. Is it just me, or is there a restless spirit loose in the village and haunting the countryside at this time of the year?

It is cool here this morning, and far from recent thoughts of salads and cold drinks, I find myself pondering soups and stews, corn fritters and gingerbread, roasted squash, the first McIntosh apples lovingly folded into a baked crumble with oatmeal, maple syrup and cinnamon. Always, there is tea. Thinking about comfort food and culinary undertakings is a sure indication of autumn, all by itself.

Life becomes quieter as daylight hours wane. Temperatures decline, and migratory kin head for warmer climes. Leaves fall, and things go to seed. The light in this corner of the great wide world ebbs and flows. We watch what is happening around us, and we drink in every blessed thing like wine. Collars up against the wind, we potter about and peer into hedgerows and thickets. We feast our senses. Then we come home to tea and toast and molasses cookies. Home is a lovely word in any season.

Haud Hogmanay, Happy New Year

Wishing you abundance, cheer and rude good health in this shiny new year, wishing you many a festive beaker (or a noggin or a dram) too. Be warm and safe this evening, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing. Mind yourself!

Be wise, be wild, be light of heart. Go forward in peace. May there be many fine adventures on the road ahead of you. May every cup you hold in your hands this year contain a star or two and have a little light dancing in its depths. May all good things come to you and your clan (or tribe) in 2025. Blessed be.

On the Last Day of the Year

It seems right to begin the last blog entry of the calendar year with sunlight shining through a fog over the Clyde river on a late December morning. The river meanders through woodlands, valleys and farm fields in the eastern Ontario highlands, crafting deeper channels wherever she pleases and loving every winding turn she makes along her way. A crone among waterways, she mutters, grumbles and roars as she journeys south to merge with the Mississippi river in Bathurst township. In some places the river is shallow and not much wider than a creek, but she is a wild thing, and she has serious attitude from her birthplace in Clyde Lake to her journey's end. 

During winter trips to the Lanark highlands, I liked to find a perch on the bank and listen as the river sang under the ice. Sometimes, she seemed to be performing a duet with the wind, and there was a kind of Zen counterpoint at work, two unbridled entities utterly independent in their contours and rhythm, but meticulously interwoven and seamless in their harmonies.

Putting all notions of complex orchestration and conventional choreography aside, there's lovely music in the air on icy winter days. The sound of moving water has always been a leitmotif for me, and I often think that my existence can be measured in rivers, currents and intermittent streams rather than cocktails, jewelry, pairs of shoes and coffee spoons.

In springtime, I watched as willows on the far shore leafed out and turned silvery green, then looked on a few weeks later as the river overflowed her banks and asserted her claim to the fertile fields on both sides. In summer, I counted bales of hay and captured images of deer and wild turkeys feeding nearby at dusk. In autumn, the sun went down over the same willows, so golden of leaf and limb that they seemed to be spun out of sunlight or stars. In the now, snow frosts every tree and branch, and the glorious light shining through them dazzles my eyes.

Thank you for coming along with me on Friday rambles this year. May there be many happy rambles in the shiny new year that is waiting for us just beyond the horizon. May there be abundance and healing and light for all of us. 

October in Tangerine and Teal

Wordless Wednesday - Turning

Turning, Slow and Easy

Friday Ramble - Little Ordinaries of the Season

It's small things that engage one's attention at this time of year: fallen leaves like confetti on the old wooden dock at the lake, woodland maples clothing themselves in scarlet, sunflowers inclining their heads and sending thousands of seed children out into the world, damp furrows where garden veggies bloomed and fruited.

Oak leaves on the trail have been touched by cool fingers overnight, and they rustle wonderfully underfoot in their earthy sepias and rosy creams. The beech trees in our woods are turning, and their coppery leaves fall in burnished, windblown showers. Autumn sunlight streams through the flickering overstory as though through clerestory windows, and the forest feels like a cathedral that goes on and on forever. Little seasonal ordinaries conjure a litany that is spicy on the tongue, touched with a leaf-dusty fragrance that follows us wherever we ramble.

Lines of swallows are congregating on rural telephone lines before flying south, and skeins of geese move to and fro between rivers and farm fields. Soon, the loons on our favorite lake will be calling goodbye as they head for warmer moorings. The great herons still haunt the shallows of local waterways, but they will not be far behind the loons in departing. Is it just me, or is there a restless melancholy spirit loose in the village and haunting the countryside?

It is a little cooler here this morning, and far from recent thoughts of salads and cold drinks, I find myself pondering soups and stews, corn fritters and gingerbread, the first McIntosh apples lovingly folded into a baked crumble with oatmeal, maple syrup and cinnamon. Thoughts about comfort food and culinary undertakings are a sure indication of autumn, all by themselves.

Life becomes quieter as daylight hours wane. Temperatures tumble, migratory kin leave, and the light changes - we drink every blessed thing in like wine. Gloves on our paws, and collars turned up against the wind, we ramble and ponder and feast our senses on the colors, sounds and spicy fragrances of autumn. Then we come home to tea and toast and molasses cookies at nightfall. It's all good.

Sequestered, Week 227 (CCXXVII)

Sequestered, Week 226 (CCXXVI)

Wordless Wednesday - After the Rain

Eighteen Years and Onward

On Sunday morning, clocks in the little blue house in the village turned back an hour, and Daylight Saving Time waved goodbye until next year. Its departure marked the end of gardening and gathering, but it also marked eighteen years of blogging, and I like the fact that the two events are aligned after a fashion.

It seems fitting that the Beech Mother should make an appearance at the top of this morning's post. For many years, we (Beau and I) have passed through her grove on our early morning walks, and we greet her and give her a pat whenever we do. She is beautiful in all seasons but particularly in late autumn and early winter.

For eighteen years, I have been logging on here every morning and posting an image or two. Sometimes I manage a few paragraphs to go along with the visual "stuff", and occasionally I spill my cuppa on the keyboard. I am still astonished that I had the cheek to set this "book of days" up in the first place, let alone do the blogging thing faithfully for eighteen years in a row. Once in a while, I am OK with my efforts, but mostly I am not. When I look at stuff I posted here years ago, I am appalled. Yuck.

However lacking they are (and they are certainly that), these are my morning pages, and chances are they will remain pretty much as they are in the coming year. There may be a bit of font and banner tinkering now and again, but that is all. I don't foresee any significant changes to this place, and I expect blogging life will simply go on as it has been doing so far, photos and scribblings and bits of poetry.

In late November of 2019, my soulmate passed away after a fierce and "no holds barred" battle with pancreatic cancer, and life without him is still rough going. I can't even begin to express how much I loved the man (and still do), how much I miss his loving, steadfast presence in my life. Within a few months of Irv's passing, other dear friends also passed away from cancer, and I miss them too.

I am still coping with the side effects of my own tussle with cancer. Most of the time, I feel as though I am just clinging to the wreckage and paddling frantically to stay afloat, but I keep going. I give thanks for my tribe and Beau, for wild kin and trees, for sisters of the heart, good neighbors and friends. I could not have gotten here without all of you.

Big life stuff notwithstanding, it's all right to be here and wrapped up in the toings and froings of what I call "the Great Round". Beau and I stay busy, and we go rambling every day and in all weathers. Sometimes, I just tuck the cell phone in my pocket, and off we go, our collars turned up against the wind.

We wander along at our own pace, conversing with the great maples and beech mothers, watching leaves dance in the autumn woods, feasting our eyes on the sun going down like a ball of fire over the river, on skies alight with winter stars and moons that seem almost close enough to reach up and touch. My departed love is always with us in spirit, resting warm and easy in the pocket of my tatty old jacket that is closest to my heart - the man loved rambling, and he was usually the first person out the door.

The road goes ever on, and there is magic everywhere if we have the eyes to see it, the wits to acknowledge it, the grace and humility and plain old human decency to show respect and say thank you. The small adventures of our journeying will continue to make their way here every morning and get spilled out on the computer screen with a bad photo or two and a whole rucksack of wonder. The world is an achingly beautiful place, and I am starting to realize that sometimes an image says everything that needs to be said, all by itself, no words needed from this Old Thing. Mary Oliver said it best:

The years to come – this is a promise –

will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought

where you seek for the shining proofs

you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter,

or more binding, than this deep affinity between 

your eyes and the world.

(excerpt from "Terns")

In another poem called "It Was Early", she wrote that sometimes one needs only to stand wherever she is to be blessed, and that is something I keep in mind as Beau and I are tottering along together. Thank you for your kind thoughts and healing energies, your comments and cards and letters, for journeying along with me this year. You are treasured more than you know, and if my fingers were working, I would write each and every one of you. Alas, they are not. Be well, my friends. Be peaceable. Be happy.

Haud Hogmanay, A Guid New Year

Wishing you abundance, cheer and rude good health in the shiny new year about to begin, many a festive beaker (or a noggin or a dram) too. Be happy this evening, be warm, be safe, wherever you are. Rejoice in brightness returning to our world. 

May every cup you hold in your hands this year contain a star or two and have a little light shining in its depths. May there be fine adventures on the road ahead. May all good things come to you and your clan (or tribe) in 2023.

The River Sings As She Freezes

Seventeen Years and Onward

On Sunday morning, clocks in the little blue house in the village turned back an hour, and Daylight Saving Time waved goodbye until next year. Its departure marked the end of gardening and gathering, but it also marked seventeen years of blogging, and I like the fact that the two events are aligned.

For seventeen years, I have logged on here every morning and posted an image or two. Sometimes I managed to put together a few paragraphs to go along with the visual "stuff", and occasionally I spilled my cuppa on the keyboard. I can't believe I had the cheek to set this "book of days" up in the first place, let alone do the blogging thing faithfully for seventeen years in a row. Once in a while, I am OK with my efforts, but mostly I am not. When I look at stuff I posted here years ago, I am appalled. Yuck.

However lacking they are, and they are certainly that, these are my morning (or artist) pages, and chances are they will remain pretty much as they are in the coming year. There may be a bit of font and banner tinkering now and again, but that is all. I don't foresee any significant changes to this place, and I expect blogging life will simply go on as it has been doing so far, photos and scribblings and bits of poetry.

In late November of 2019, my soulmate passed away after a fierce and "no holds barred" battle with pancreatic cancer, and life without him is rough going. I can't even begin to express how much I loved the man (and still do), how much I miss his steady presence in my life, every single day. Within a few months of Irv's passing, other dear friends also passed away from cancer, and I miss them too.

I am still coping with the side effects of my own tussle with cancer, and most of the time, I feel I am just clinging to the wreckage and paddling frantically to stay afloat, but I give thanks for my tribe and darling Beau, for wild kin, sisters of the heart, good neighbors and friends. I could not have gotten here without them, without all of you.

Big life stuff notwithstanding, it's all right to be here and wrapped up in the doings of what I like to call "the Great Round". Beau and I stay busy, and we go rambling with a notebook and camera every day and in all weathers. Sometimes, I just tuck the Samsung S21 cell phone in my pocket, and off we go, our collars turned up against the wind.

We wander along at our own pace, conversing with the great maples and beech mothers, watching leaves dance in the autumn woods, feasting our eyes on the sun going down like a ball of fire over the river, on skies alight with winter stars and lustrous moons that seem almost close enough to reach up and touch. My departed love is always with us in spirit, resting easy in the pocket of my tatty old jacket - he loved rambling and was usually the first person out the door.

The road goes ever on, and there is magic everywhere if we have the eyes to see it, the wits to acknowledge it, the grace and humility and plain old human decency to show respect and say thank you. The small adventures of our journeying will continue to make their way here and get spilled out on the computer screen mornings with a bad photo or two and a whole rucksack of wonder. The world is an achingly beautiful place, and I am starting to realize that sometimes an image says everything that needs to be said, all by itself, no words needed from this Old Thing. Mary Oliver said it best:

The years to come – this is a promise –

will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought

where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,

than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.

(excerpt from Terns)

In another poem called It Was Early, she wrote that sometimes one needs only to stand wherever she is to be blessed, and that is something I keep in mind as Beau and I are tottering along together. Thank you for your kind thoughts and healing energies, your comments and cards and letters, for journeying along with me this year. You are treasured more than you know, and if my fingers were working, I would write each and every one of you. Alas, they are not. Be well, my friends. Be peaceable. Be happy.

A Later Shade of Gold

And so it goes... Many trees in the Lanark highlands have already lost their leaves and fallen asleep in their leaf-strewn alcoves, but others are just starting to turn now. Still others hold their turning in abeyance until late in November, and we are always happy to see them on our rambles.

Whole hillsides of lacy tamarack are gold, and their foliage dazzles the eyes. When I remember their splendor in the depths of winter, the memory will leave me close to tears and hankering for a long trip on foot into the forests north of Lake Superior. No, not this year, perhaps next year...

Butternut trees on our hills are always the first to drop their leaves, but the great oaks along the trail into the deep woods retain their bronzey leaves well into winter, and native beeches are still wearing a delightful coppery hue. One of our favorite old maples puts on a magnificent golden performance at this time of the year, and we attend her one woman show with pleasure. While in her clearing, we remember to say thanks for her efforts to brighten a subdued and rather monochromatic interval in the turning of the seasons.

It has been a windy autumn, and we were delighted to discover this week that the north wind has not plucked Maple's leaves and left her standing bare and forlorn on the hill with her sisters. It (the wind, that is) has been doing its best, but the tree is standing fast. I would be "over the moon" if I could photograph or paint something even the smallest scrip as grand and elemental and graceful as Maple is creating in her alcove. Every curve and branch and burnished dancing leaf is a wonder, and the blue sky is a perfect counterpoint.

Writing this, I remembered that as well as being an archaic word for a scrap or fraction of something, scrip also describes a small wallet or pouch once carried by pilgrims and seekers. That seems fitting for this journey into the woods and our breathless standing under Maple in all her glory. Oh, to belong to the sisterhood of tree and leaf...

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. Happy November everyone!