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Quiet Entry
Purple-Hull pea blossom The first Sunday of fall, and it has strolled in quietly. The sky is completely overcast, but no approach of rain. It was chilly enough on the front porch this morning for me to have to don a light jacket. Mrs. Orr and I sat out there, her shelling peas, me watching the birds. A downy woodpecker was on the downed pine, his steady staccato attack ringing across the valley. A pair of titmice took turns bathing in the birdbath while a goldfinch perched at the edge, sipping and watching. A murmuration of starlings in the next pasture swung and swooped and startled my wife with…
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‘Tis October
The hurricane/tropical storm took an eastward cank as it approached the eastern states and so most of the rain missed us. We had some on Friday evening, then overnight that night pretty hard, but yesterday it only sprinkled a time or two, and today is dry but blissfully cloudy. Friday night, Mrs. Orr was driving home and texted me, “Look at the rainbow.” I went outside and looked west, but saw only a golden sky, lit from behind the rain clouds. When I turned back to the house, there it was, a double rainbow in the northeast of our little world, and my heart sang within me as I stood…
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Summer’s End
For the first time in my entire life, the end of summer has sparked within me a feeling of melancholy. Time was, I would rejoice at the end of hot weather and welcome the cooler temperatures. But this year, the approaching winter is heralded by the awareness of many things new to me, things of which I have become aware, things that leave me sitting for long stretches with head down and eyes unseeing. This is the world, and I must, as Dylan Thomas admonished, have faith. Goodbye, summertime of this year. You will have passed forever in just a few more thumps of the heart. And Happy Birthday, Weia…
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The Cold Rolling Towards Me
I began this post in longhand, sitting at my desk this morning, allegedly working, watching tufts of cool mist hanging in the air outside the glass door. This is the time of year when the nearest neighbor is separating his cows from the calves, in preparation for market. The worried mamas have been bawling all day, as they have been for the two days before. The air over the farm is anxious, fretful, which is a shame, because we’ve just gotten our first dose of fall-like weather, about 50F at night and in the mid-70s today, air as clear as an infant’s eyes, same deep blue, same lack of omens…
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First Day of Fall
The summer is gone, and it will never return. Until next year. But that summer will not be the same as this one was, and nothing is ever the same, but there is nothing new under the sun, whether a summer sun or a winter one, and the full moon waters the earth with its silver light tonight. Silver light tonight. Mrs. Orr and I sat and talked for a long time about the forces that are prodding this country and this world down certain paths. It’s difficult to talk about these things, but it has ever been difficult to deliberately choose to defy evil. Hamlet defied augury; Mrs. Orr…