Sunday

For me, the mood is definitely tinted by the upcoming holidays. Little things, like checking bakery store hours for the week ahead. Catching sight of a Clasen's display in the grocery store, with a small gingerbread house and packets of my beloved holiday cookies -- their stars, hearts and moons. I have a legal pad that has pages of notes. What to do in the next five days, fifteen days, thirty days. What the kids might like for Christmas. What dinners will require special attention in advance of their preparation. It's all filling my head right now. And music, too. When I hike, I nearly always have a song running in my head. Once it sticks, it wont budge until the walk is over. I noticed in the last couple of days that the songs in my head are, well, of the season. (I love holiday music for exactly 4 weeks out of the year: from the day after Thanksgiving until December 25th. After that I swear I never want to hear another bouncy jingly tune again. Ever.) And the candles: I'm temporarily moving away from interesting scents from Scandinavian boreal forests and am plunging into pine and blue spruce.  All this before we've even dug into Thanksgiving.

I mentioned that we're slowly descending into a cold spell. Today is the last day where we're still well above freezing (a high of 50F or 10C) and so the morning walk to the barn is pleasant...

Breakfast? Oh, it's always deliciously wonderful.

And then I push myself to do my annual grand mow of most (but not all) of the farmette lands. I use the tractor mower for this -- you need a solid, large machine to manage the tall growth of our mock prairie and to power through, as it goes over fallen timber. 

It's a bumpy and dusty terrain (we haven't had rain for weeks!) and there is a very large part of me that hates this job. My head spins, my stomach turns. On the other hand, there is a deep feeling of satisfaction that you get from bringing down a year's worth of spent growth. Weeds, goldenrod, tall grasses, dogwood. Sticky seeds, thorny bramble canes, dried snakeroot. I bring it all down. 

The purpose of this is manifold: I want to slow down the growth of invasives, and I want to open up the ground so that the wildflowers that I love have a chance to emerge. Out front, I want to mulch the maple leaves into something that wont totally smother the grasses that do survive the dense shade.

By the time I'm done, I am ready to collapse and not move for at least ten hours. Did I mention how woozy riding that bumpy machine makes me feel?

All that and my movement rings dont even budge! Ah well: I sacrifice a good chunk of my day for the health of the farmette lands and the plant life that I want to encourage and keep healthy here.

In the evening, the young family comes for dinner. They, too, are focusing more and more on the holidays. Sparrow, who is always too quick to proclaim something as his favorite ("my favorite food is watercress!" "Have you ever had it?" "I dont think so...") has been saying for a while that his favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. ("Why?" "I told you already many times! Because you give thanks!") Feeling a bit like he is abandoning me by going with his family to Chicago for that day, he draws me a picture of just him and me at a Thanksgiving table together. "This will make you feel better!" 

All my grandkids are very, very sweet to me.

(wait! do I see braids??)

(Sparrow really loves to read these books to his brother...)

(If she stands on a chair pretending to be the Statue of Liberty, he, the one next in line, has to do it too. Sandpiper joins in, of course, though he is clueless about Ms Liberty, or her iconic pose.)

(finally, dinner is ready...)

Warm, breezy and fragrant summer evenings may be beautiful, but honestly, nothing beats the cozy and snug, dark evenings of winter. You add your own light. You add color. You add just a whiff of a forest scent (or you bake something with cinnamon). Maybe you mix up a kir vin blanc, or a warm cup of tea with honey. You take out the quilt or a throw blanket and you settle in for a quiet set of hours and it is nothing short of sublime.