A little November chill

Good morning.  It's early, I know...dark still here, with the moon a bright-white (nearly) round companion in the western sky. 

It's cold, too...31 F, promised to dip to 29 in the next hour or so.  Fleece jacket and wool socks on, I walked out into the clear air to pull the trash bin out for pickup and gather mail, and stopped for a few minutes, enjoying dark, cold, moon.  In a little while, when it's lighter, I think I will get out again to walk.  My favorite times to wander out this month have been at twilight, but this morning, dawn entices me.

This is Thanksgiving week, the children home from school for their fall break and the holiday, so it's quiet, no early busses' yellow rumble.  One or two of the families on the street have left already for visits to relatives, but most of us remain in situ, planning holiday gatherings in small, familiar numbers.  I, who happily used to gather tables full of celebrants, have come to like the gatherings of half a dozen inside.

Inside on ordinary days, the tasks draw winterish...sewing to knitting, garden work to kitchen work, reading and movies to...more reading and movies.  Music tunes-in more contemplative, less jazzy.  The Farmer's Market sprouts greens, thick-skinned vine crops and crafts, fewer delicate fruits.  Summer herbs move to warmer interiors.

There's more regular time for art, too, thanks to a weekly visit from Josephine, who paints with me for a few hours.  Though she's the younger, I watch her precise drawing (she likes to invent new dresses for characters from  shows) and her slashes of color that grow into organic abstracts.  When two of us paint, each in our different ways, we open new vistas to each other.

Josephine, painting 1

Yesterday, for instance, she watched me tapping my brush over the collage I was working on to make tiny gold splatters.  "How do you do that?" she asked, and suddenly her painting was splendid with silver and red fireworks.  In turn, those same impulsive strokes inspire me to be wilder, too.

Josephine, painting 2

Talking while we work, we manage to shift our left brains to right, distracting our hands from depending too much on the conscious.  It reminds me of one of my best art teachers here in town, Betty Bell (talk about an artist who reveled in color!), who would move around behind us, chatting away about anything but art...rumors, travel stories, romantic disappointments...to which we listened while our hands and eyes went their surreptitious way.  Now and then she would stop and point to what we were doing...."Look!  That's just like the stone wall in Florence...maybe just bring your strokes out a little to shade."  or "Now how did you get those wonderful greens?  If you flipped lines here and there..."  At the end of class, we'd look across the room at the work we'd created, hardly recognizing the promise she'd hinted at, which, often unwittingly, had come true.  I miss her.

Betty Bell, Gathering by the Water

Thinking of that freedom of hand and eye is like this morning's clear bright cold, being out in the first air, reft of any busy-ness, open to possibility...

 ...my Thanksgiving wish for you all.

Time, you old journeyman...

 

Time, you old journeyman, will you not stay/Put up your caravans just for one day?

Sometimes, old poetry comes in handy...you know, the sort you memorized in school because it rhymed and sounded like it meant something, though you had no clue what.  At that age, time had yet to make its deep mark on you; history was about fact and figura, some bella and some mala.   You beat the hours getting to school and work on time, and the minute when finally they let out, or making it to games for the start and parties suitably late to be noticed.  But the lines of those poems ring in your ears over the centuries, quoting or misquoting, and come forth when finally they fit the moment.  As above.

mother nature, father time

These past weeks, Time (old Nemesis, even in my young days) takes its rhythms from the fast-falling leaves.  On my ground, given its tree population, they come down like hard rain.  I'm thankful my yard has no grass for me to mow, but the barrage of Fall  makes up for that.

Raking leaves is actually one of my favorite chores on these beautiful, cool, clear (but  alas, still dry) days; I feel the breezes throw down their giant confetti, and something in my blood quickens.  My energy is up, true, but, taking on their pace, I find myself rushing through each day.  I seem to be in a race with Time.

For instance, it's still two weeks until Thanksgiving, and already I am buying squashes, persimmons, pomegranates, and cranberries, putting up soup stock, vegetables, chickens and breads in the freezer, and dreaming up a menu for a dinner it isn't even my turn this year to make.  I rationalize it by thinking, oh, but there's always Thanksgiving Friday...I can invite the neighbors in for leftovers.  

Not that I'm going to have leftovers; this year I'm a guest in somebody else's house.  No matter, I can always make some up, and maybe the neighbors will bring some of theirs.  Each day, I've been trying new recipes or new ways of doing old recipes for the holidays, experimenting with things like farmer's lettuce saute'ed in butter, butternut squash and multi-grain dressing (I can add sausage for the boys' tastes), shrimp in avocado and lime.  I made a pumpkin bread with chocolate chips (that went in the freezer, too)...I'll plate it with a drizzle of chocolate-cinnamon sauce.  (I tried a sauce of apples and cinnamon, testing it on Cathy and Steve the other night, but it wasn't quite...quite.)  I'm also thinking about Kevin's Cranberry Clafouti, posted just today...what do you think?  The universe of Fall food ideas is becoming my siren song.

Cranberry clafouti @Kevin, A Garden for the House

 

Other rushes clutter the days...don't tell anybody, but I've already bought 90% of my holiday gifts.  Evenings, I tear through books faster, flip faster through old favorite movies, and make list upon list for things not due til December or farther. 

I've been piling on activities for my new volunteer job with PORCH, collaborating with Helen and Joanne, the more seasoned veterans, on new approaches, planning future events, and watercoloring thank-you cards I leave for our generous neighbors.

Though the days are shorter, I'm walking longer, in the over-bright slant of sun that has me shading my eyes from first to last light.  With every step, I'm watching Time not only empty the trees, but also harden the ground, bare roots and glaze stones.  

It's a lovely season, no doubt about it, probably my favorite of the four.  A  season of holidays...each to anticipate, each to make a do about, each some good to celebrate.  Even the days afterward are minor holidays in themselves...Thanksgiving Friday (no, I don't mean the mad bargain shopping, though I gather that's fun for some), the seven more days of Chanukah (my spiced apples are already made...see above), the week between Christmas and New Year when we travel or lounge the days away watching gifts appear and disappear.

But this racing of days and hours...November...what's that about, I wonder?   At my age, at this time of year, ought I not be dragging my heels, pulling my adversary back into a civilized strut? 

All I can think of is that essay we used to teach from the freshman readers, the anthropologist Loren Eiseley's rendering of evolutionary history in terms of a single day...the slow-w-w hours before earth is formed, the slightly slow-wer hours where oceans and rivers stabilize, pushing continents around, growing plants, the slow disappearance of dinosours and ice shouldering its way south...and then, as humans come on the scene,  the milliseconds of fast frenzied destruction, the last century,  leaving you breathless.

Or there are Shakespeare's lines  ...when yellow leaves or none or few do hang/ upon those boughs which shake against the cold....

Anyway, if you happen to understand this November clearer than I, please clue me in.  I've been too busy chasing these leaves around to think calmly about it.

Spiced Apples 

                        8 large apples (the soft ones don't work well), peeled, cored, and chopped

                        1/2 cup apple juice

                        1 tsp cinnamon

                        1 slice of lemon peel

                Cook apples slowly in the juice until soft.  Stir in cinnamon and lemon peel.  Let sit for a few minutes to cool before putting up.  

Will last a few weeks in tightly lidded jars in the refrigerator.  If you make bushels of them and want them to last all winter, you can seal them properly in hot water.  If you pack them in smaller jars, they make pretty gifts, too.