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Winter Completed
You think winter will never end, and then, when you don’t expect it, when you have almost forgotten it, warmth comes, and a different light. — Wendell Berry Last night before bed, I let the dogs out into the back yard. I tracked them with the flashlight, wary of what might scamper away from them in the dark, setting up a chase and an opportunity for noise. In the beam of the flashlight, I saw what looked like little snowflakes. I stuck out my arm and tiny white crystalline dots clung to the fabric of my sleeve. Huh, I thought. Two days ago, it was almost seventy degrees. That can’t…
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, Jinx, Lectio Divina, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Reflections
Daylight And Other Things Saved
An almost-spring rain has been falling most of the day, and the birds have been very busy at the feeders and in the birdbath. The daffodils are up, along with the grape hyacinth. The Virginia bluebells are getting ready to bud out, the forsythia is daubed with yellow up and down its slender branches, and the peach trees are blossoming out as well. A near neighbor’s pear tree is a perfect pink lollypop in the distance, and all the colors are set off by the silvery mist in the hollers. And tonight we move the clocks forward into Daylight Savings Time, and the tone and tenor of the days will…
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Jinx, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Reflections
Paths of Freeze
Upon our second awakening this morning, the sun showed the crushed glass rug of frost all over everything, and my bones felt as if someone had injected crushed glass into the joints. Second awakening? Oh, yes. Our first awakening of the day was at about, ohhhhhh, 0230, when the dogs began snorting around outside our bedroom and demanding some attention. We got up to let ’em out and and see what might be yanking their emotional chains. They ran straight to the maple tree in the back yard and started leaping up on it like trained coon dogs. I shined the flashlight up into the bare branches and expected to…
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Halfway Done
October has swept in with its blazing flourish, its browning, crumbling, scything sweep, making the cheeks ruddy and the shoulders shiver, remembering the heavier garments that have hung ignored for months, the articles of garb we don’t want to use but for which we are grateful when we take them up again. And now, in the middle part of the tenth month, we are grateful. Our neighbor arrived Friday night with his loader and attacked the enormous pine tree that has reclined in his pasture since Palm Sunday since he hoisted it off our shared fence and dropped it on his side. Mrs. Orr and I reminisced about the day…
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Mow No Mo
Late yesterday afternoon, I decided to do my final full mowing of the year, since the temperatures are slated to drop steadily throughout this week. This is typically the timeframe in which I drive the little yellow tractor out of the barn for the last time of the season. It was a most glorious day to ride the machine and cut the grass down. I did the front and back yards, along with the front meadow. My neighbor’s son always mows the south pasture because he rakes and bales the grass for hay. I chewed up the leaves with the blades and they will make good compost material; I’m determined…
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Days Upon Days
The temperatures are so very mild here now…about 72F , sunny and mild, with rock-bottom humidity. The sensitive antennae of my bones tell me that winter will approach with more speed than I had anticipated. Mrs. Orr and I were talking recently about how we used to dread the hot weather — because in Texas, that’s really all we had — and how we welcomed the fall and winter months. Not no more, ese! The cold has an effect that it didn’t in our salad days, so there is a novel sense of dread now with the shifting sun patterns and the almost-chilly breeze. I am watching the hummingbirds closely,…
- Bluebelle, Books, Church Life, Daily Life, Dixee, Dreams, Jinx, Mrs. Orr, Music, Photographs, Quotations, Reflections
Royal Pains
It’s raining softly here today, and the valley is quiet except for the protestations of cows who are methodically being separated from their calves. We love the rain and the clouds, but there is an uncharacteristic sad feeling in the very air. And time is passing much too quickly. There is some Alanis-level irony in the fact that the squash we so carefully planted in the garden has done poorly, but one lone “volunteer” plant that sprang up, probably because of a bird depositing a seed, in a bed of shrubs bordering the back porch. This one unintentional plant has provided enough good squash for several meals so far, and…
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Labor Day
The humidity was heavy in the air this morning, much more pronounced than yesterday. It will be an oppressively hot day, but looking at the calendar, I am mindful that this will change more quickly than I like to believe. The sun is beginning to get that Emily Dickinson “certain slant” to it, and the days and evenings feel slightly different, as though there has been some subtle but great turning — which there has. This earth is moving and tilting in preparation for the months that will bring winter to this hemisphere. When I look at the skies, whether in the blue of day or the pinpricked black of…
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The Only Day
Today marks the ninth anniversary of the day my mother departed this life and went on to the next one. My sister and I chatted about this last night, remembering some of the happy times and some of the not-so-happy times we shared with the stoic, flinty old woman who gave us life and fed us and sheltered us and tried to guide us. I miss you, Mother, and I love you. I hope to see you again when my own time comes to sail into the west. *** It’s still hot here and will reach 90 today and for the remainder of the week, but the mornings have been…
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The Thirteenth of August
Today would have been her 103rd birthday, and her absence these nine years has left a divot on my life’s surface. I miss her, and I am glad she isn’t here to see what has become of her country and her region. Seeing such ugliness would have grieved her tough, hidden old heart. Her middle name was Viola, which she hated. I always loved it, thinking it had a Southern literary lilt to it, like Eudora or Flannary, and I would sometimes address her by it, which enraged her. “Viola,” I’d say, “Reckon what it would take to get you to make me some bacon for supper?” And she would…