221030 october gone

 Oct. 30

This rainbow seemed to plunge right into the valley below us, and then the sun dropped below the ridge and the rainbow was gone.

 

Where has October gone? The days have blown away like the leaves and we are suddenly at its end! I have been caught up in caring for this baby. I had forgotten, not mentally, but viscerally, what it is like to have a toddler in the house, and how, as with a new puppy, you follow them about all day. Or they are in your arms while you do the things that need doing, or you are feeding them, then putting them down for a nap. All the time the two of you talk to each other, babble about what you are seeing, hearing, feeling. It is hard to find time for my own interests, they trickle to the bottom of the box. 

Here is our little person, examining the condition of the dry-stone wall. His father and grandfather are dry-stone "wallers". The rabbit hat is cute yes, but more importantly it seems to be comfortable and so it stays on! 

At the beginning of October; four weeks ago, only, the trees were turning.

Now, so thoroughly are they bared of leaf, and the green undergrowth is gone, it is already hard to remember what the clothed forest looked like! But of course the forest floor is not naked, really, although the contours of the underlying hill are once again evident. The floor is a deep carpet of fallen leaves, which shelters the plant roots and seeds, and the tiny creatures, or their eggs under its insulating leaves. Then all of their nutrients will become the new soil, to feed future trees and undergrowth. 

Except, of course, for the trickster beech, whose leaves cling to the branches, to blow like wayward birds across the snow and then fall in the spring to lay a pale, paper surface on the forest floor. 

That is not a lake in the valley, but a cloud asleep, before the sun wakes it and it clears skyward. 

The two evergreen ferns, almost the only green left, the intermediate wood fern and the Christmas fern: one wants to use human epithets, dauntless, almost sentinal. 

The moss comes into its own.

This hardy knapweed was flowering in Fig's garden amid the brown gone-to-seed goldenrod. 

The streams, barely seen in the full undergrowth of summer, are visible again. I am reminded of their elemental kinship with the earth and the hill.

We had our first true frost on Friday morning: the hay-scented fern all brown and frosted, 

and this leaf! - thick with crystals.

This morning: Rocky and I were out early for our walk, and went up the meadow to find the sun. 

We were walking in the shadow of our own ridge and the sun was lighting the far western ridge, beyond our woods. Sunday today, it is going to be a beautiful warm sunny day, and there is music this afternoon! 

*****

K and I eat well, most of the time.* We try to eat whole, unprocessed foods, largely vegan. We avoid oils, margarine, sugars, although a teaspoon of maple syrup goes into almost every dish! (We also prefer to eat "locally", that is, foods that are sourced near us, that don't need travel expenses. I keep picturing a mango sitting in an airplane seat.) When I am busy, however, it can be challenging to find the time for food preparation. We sometimes eat pasta and bread, and sometimes meat and eggs. The next best thing to fresh is frozen and canned food, still whole and preserved while fresh. I was obviously craving, after a few days of quicker meals, nothing but whole plants. I used two cans of black beans, a large can of tomatoes, two cans of coconut milk (the minimally processed kind you cook with, not the "milk substitute" kind). I added a bunch of kale that had been wrapped as-is from Rain's garden and frozen, a fresh orange pepper, black pepper and curry powder (and yes, for the tomatoes, a teaspoon of maple syrup). It was quick to prepare, and delicious.

Dessert was our old favorite, being wholly Quebec, apples and (fresh!) cranberries, cooked soft, sweetened with maple syrup. At other times of the year I use dried cranberries, which are pre-sweetened. This winter however, I will freeze as much as I can - I just put them straight in the freezer in their store bag, and the grocer may also sell whole frozen cranberries all year, I don't know. Meals like this satisfy better than any other. I wanted a snack before bed, and again, could only imagine eating fresh: I made a big spinach and lettuce salad and dressed it with apple cider vinegar and (well, yes!) maple syrup. 

Sunsets have been nice recently; I am my mother's daughter and want to see, each evening, the singular setting of this day's sun.

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Then, last night, a harbinger of Halloween, the new moon was setting just after the sun.

Mumma Yaga

Most of the Time, a really nice Dylan song.