Buying Time..After the Fall Back

November 2...Cold feet

November hangs in the balance.

On the one hand is the weather: the darkening afternoons, the lowering skies heavy with frozen precipitation, the looming deadlines on all outdoor activity...the crops aren't all out, the fieldwork is incomplete, the garden is still a mess and the greenhouses are not all covered. Despite the long nights, sleep is restless and there is an undercurrent of unease.

On the other hand, there is the unmitigated generousity of Thanksgiving.  The slate is wiped clean on Thanksgiving...all incomplete tasks are put on hold, paused, or just ignored....as we cease striving and concentrate on the long term thankfulness we are called upon to express as our joy and obligation.  We are the worst of sinners if we neglect this glorious duty.

Before this awesome gravity is upon us, we can take pleasure and respite in the countdown to Thanksgiving...the vignettes of continuing fall in the weeks between commercial holidays. Work continues out of doors.  Even though the evenings come early, the weather in our part of the Plains, though unsettled, still can bless with bright sun and low humidity.  There is frost...but there has been frost...there are assuredly gray bitter days ahead...but the wind today  is swirling the brown leaves in a dervish and the lowering sun makes diamonds of the dust.

Here is early November in its golden gleam, its dust, its brief and breath taking beauty between the hot glare of summer and the brittle transience of winter.

Cleaning up after the frost ends the garden

Leaves of grass, of course

Bring on flannel...before the snow

pasta bowls...pasta boil...hot food for guys in the field

winter keeper apples...sweet but scarred

warm feet....fun socks

singing the praises of flowering kale

fall colors below 32 degrees

There's a guy in my garden cart

Deep shadows of an Autumn Joy sedum

Leafy joy

Where's Josh? There's a boy in my leaf pile!