Tag Archives: Autumn

Season Changes

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Ice forming on the surface of the pond yesterday, like wrinkles over the water. You can see stones around the water in a ring.
Ice was forming on the surface of the pond yesterday.

Yesterday felt like the true turning of the seasons, from warm autumn 70 degree days to a chilly, almost winter, high of 40 degrees. We had a freeze overnight and the pond surface was wrinkled with ice forming. I went around the yard putting away the last garden hose, the five-gallon buckets, the little tables we use in the back next to chairs. I turned over the wheelbarrows behind the garage. I covered our patio table and chairs with a tarp, and I plugged in the bird bath so it will keep water thawed during frozen weather. I got out the snow shovel and sand mixture to put on the back porch. I left 4 chairs around the fire circle–maybe we’ll get outside around a fire–it could happen!

Last Thursday was my last time lying in the hammock for the season. I could see two frogs still hanging out in the pond, the color of mud, not the green of summer. While I was lying there, suddenly I saw a huge bird flying nearby, up to the pine trees at the back near our yard. Looking closer, I recognized the characteristic shape of a turkey! It was dusk and the light was turning all black and white and shades of gray. We’ve had a little trio wandering in the yard during the last few weeks, so I am guessing this was one of them. I had to put the hammock away the next day.

Turkey in a pine tree at dusk, mostly black and white silhouette.
Turkey in a pine tree at dusk

This morning, we had a bit of snow, mixed with rain, so here we are. The gardening work, whether fully complete or not, is done for the season. And I was inspired to get back to my winter project–going through boxes of old papers in the basement. I am proud of myself for diving into it today!

Last winter, I went through 11 boxes from my years in Boston, organized, winnowed, and reduced them to four. I had just started on some boxes from the time before I moved there. This winter, I will go through papers from my time at the Women’s Peace Camp, and in Chicago, and in Grand Rapids. I went to Chicago from Grand Rapids in 1983 to attend Chicago Theological Seminary, from which I graduated in 1986. I visited the Peace Camp in the summer of 1983, and then lived there in the summer of 1985, and winter/summer 1986. These places were the scenes of my coming out as a lesbian, and my trying to figure out what ministry might look like for someone like me. At the time I had left the Catholic church, and was part of the emerging feminist spirituality movement. I experienced so much transformation during those years, and I am fascinated to read what I wrote about it. It was a season of profound personal change.

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Letting Go

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Flag iris leaves in the pond changing color, and reflected

The many-colored transformations of autumn plants remind me of the beauty in the spiritual practice of letting go. As the leaves let go of their green chlorophyl, so their deep colors are revealed. When I feel encumbered by heavy memories, mistakes, failures. When I feel regret for things undone, unsung, I pray in this way. I take all the feelings and memories and release them into the loving hands of Spirit. Ego desires for acknowledgement, success. I let go. Ego wounds from rejections, betrayals. I let go. Loneliness, weariness, I let go.

Spirit, here I am, all imperfect, yet gifted, all hungering for justice, yet broken with this land and country. I sit alone, yet I feel your presence, and I turn to you, again and again. I let go. I am small, but I am surrounded by and filled with your Love. There is a time for action, and there is also a time for surrender. I surrender to the River flowing. In this surrender there is trust and peace.

Someday, I will let go into the mystery of eternity, the mystery that is death. Each night, I let go into the mystery that is sleep. Each morning, I let go of what is not mine for this day, and I open to what blessings and what actions are here for me to take up. I am too small to try to carry the world. And yet, in this surrender, I am at one with all of the beings who surround me, people, animals, plants, spirits. We are all flowing in the River of Love.

Part of the Landscape

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I was stretched out, lying in the hammock, with my feet up, listening to an audio version of “Olive, Again.” Suddenly a chickadee landed on my black sneaker, and started pecking inquisitively around the seams. I wish I could have snapped a photo, but he was gone again in just a minute. I guess I must have seemed like a part of the landscape then. I can’t imagine a better way of being perceived!

Or maybe I might be seen as a friendly or annoying neighbor? The other day, a chipmunk was stuffing her cheeks at the bird feeder, and I decided to chase her away so the birds could get some too. I walked toward the feeder, and she just stayed put. I actually reached out and gently touched her back–at which point, she flew off the feeder and took off toward the pitch pine tree. Then, yesterday, I was lying in the hammock, and a chipmunk was perched on the trunk of the pitch pine, chattering at me. I wondered if it might be the same one.

Or maybe it was the one that a few weeks ago was walking across the patio in what seemed like a drunken haze–she would go a few feet and than fall over on her side. I thought perhaps she was injured, and wondered about taking her to a wildlife center. I set a small box into her pathway and she ran right into it. But after doing a bit of research, the recommendation seemed to be to generally let them take care of themselves, so I released her and she ran into a nearby chipmunk hole. I hope she recovered!

The chipmunk on the patio next to our deck stairs

I’ve also been doing a few small projects in the yard. The biggest project was to change the level of the outflow channel for the pond. I removed the stones covering the channel near the edge of the pond, and lifted up the linings, and raised the opening a couple inches. I was thinking that perhaps having a couple more inches of water depth in the pond might help it over-winter better. Last year several plants didn’t survive. I filled it to the new level with water from two rain barrels and then put back stones over the channel top again. Probably no one else would notice the difference, but I am glad that I did it. I also went around and cut off dead leaves from the pond plants, and pulled out some more algae. I was sorry to disturb the frogs’ familiar habitat, but they seem to be doing fine now.

Pond with 2 inch higher level of water, (plus the scissors used to cut dead plants.)

Today, I harvested some more thyme, rinsed it, and put it into the herb dryer. I’ve harvested kale and broccoli for cooking, chives to cut up and freeze. Last week I harvested licorice roots. I scrubbed them well, cut them up into tiny pieces and put them in the herb dryer too.

Licorice root after washing

Today was a lovely warm day, so good to be outside, to be part of the landscape. Tomorrow it will be colder, and that is harder for me. But I am trying to enjoy this season of autumn, not just as a time of preparing for winter, but a graceful time of its own, all the golden leaves, harvest time. Harvest time for so many of the creatures all around us.

Thunder Magic

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Trees at the back of our yard in fall colors

I woke to a crash of thunder about 7 a.m. this morning, with a driving rain pounding against the wall and window near the head of my bed. What a beautiful sound to start the day! The rain only lasted about an hour, and then the skies were gray, but the air was lit by leaves of gold and orange encircling our back yard. We’ve had no frost yet, and the October transformations are unfolding with beauty and grace.  

I’ve been surprised by how low in the sky the sun travels at this time of year—even at noon it is lurking behind the tree canopy shading the back half of the yard. You’d think after all these years I would be used to it by now. I’ve also been surprised by new raspberries ripening fat and delicious. Usually our “everbearing” raspberries don’t ripen in the fall—there is not enough sun and warmth in their spot to bring them to completion—but perhaps taking out the (invasive) Norway maples near the fence helped them to get more morning light. They taste better than any of the summer raspberries.

October is also a month for ancestors, leading up to Samhain on the 31st. I have continued to search for more information about Marie-Madeleine, my Innu great-great-great grandmother. I’ve been lucky that I emailed two people who seemed to have some resources, and they both replied and sent information. Magic! One told me that, from looking at his records, Marie Madeleine Manitukueu could not be my ancestor, because she married someone else in 1815, and then that person remarried in 1825 after her death. So that was incredibly helpful. Most of the work will be eliminating the women who cannot be my ancestor.

Then he also sent me a list of 17 “Marie Madeleines” or “Madeleines” recorded births from 1790 to 1818 at the Postes du Roi, from the databases he had access to, and agreed with me that it seemed most likely that she would be born closer to 1800, rather than 1789, since her last child (Marie Sylvie) was born in 1846. (The 1789 date is based on her death record stating that she was about 60 years of age at her death in 1849.)

I believe that going by child-bearing years is the best guide. A late baby in her 40s is more possible than in her 50s. The child before the one in 1846 was born several years earlier in 1839 (Sophie)—so it seems also more likely that 1846 was a late baby. Her prior children were about 3 years apart. Her first documented child was born around 1828, but it is possible that she was the mother of earlier-born children of her spouse Peter McLeod.  (Most sources say that he had an earlier Montagnais woman spouse, but there is less agreement about which children had which mother.) To go by a childbearing age of about 16 to 50, it seems like her own birth would be between 1796 and 1812.

This leaves 11 women on the chart—stretching slightly to include Marie Madeleine Katshisheiskuet (born 11/11/1795). So, the next thing I did was explore GénéalogieQuebec.com, to see if I could do research on each of the women. But I ran into a problem immediately. The records of the Postes du roi included on that site seem to be missing many of these vital years, not yet indexed, and none were available in direct images. I could not seem to find access to the databases to which my email correspondent had access. To complicate things a bit more, the parents listed for Marie Madeleine Katshisheiskuet in GénéologieQuebec are different from my earlier resource, and I think the only way to clear that up would be to look at an original record.

So, I feel stuck again—there is such a distance between Quebec and the United States—so much knowledge does not cross the border. I would like nothing better than to pore over these old records looking for the lives of these 11 women, seeing if I could find other marriage and death records that would steer me away from some, and toward my own ancestors. I don’t know why I think I can succeed where prior genealogists have not found a link. But maybe they didn’t have the same motivation. I’ve sent an email to the GénéologieQuebec site asking about the Postes du roi records. I also think I found some at the Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec, but not published or indexed.

It’s like the detective stories I’ve been reading—so many mysteries, so many clues. Why do I write about it here? I’m putting some magic out into the universe, hoping that some kind of thunder might open the cloudy skies between me and the past, between me and the place my ancestors are from. I’ve learned a lot in the process. It has been my experience that when I reach out to my ancestors, they reach back—more so when I have actually traveled to Quebec, but since that is not possible, I hope they will reach across the border.

Autumn Colors

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The last few days have been so beautiful in our back yard. The autumn color has come to us. The best times are when Margy and I curl up in the hammock together and just look at all we can see: the trees, the sky, the clouds, the birds, the orchard. When the dusk of evening falls, we see bats fly from the trees into the clearing, diving after insects.

It is raining today, but this past week of sunny cool days I felt some new energy to work in the garden. I am weeding and cleaning up scraggly herb plants under the fruit trees–who knew that oregano could get so so wild? Two and a half patches finished and two and a half to go. The plan is to clean them up, then plant a few garlic bulbs around the trees, then refresh them with more compost. I have already sifted some compost from our very root-laden pile and added it to the hazelnut hedge.

Also, what a difference a good hand held pruner makes! I treated myself to buy a really good one, a Felco #8, which arrived at the end of September. I love it! The pruners I had before never did a good job, no matter how much I sharpened them. Now pruning is effortless. I am using them to cut the woody oregano flower shoots. Our mulberry tree (our second attempt to grow one actually) didn’t do well again–we just got two long side branches, so I pruned off the lower branch and trained and staked the higher one to be a new leader–we’ll try again to help it grow next year.

I also finally cut off the dead flowers from the plants near the street. I should have been dead-heading them all along, down to the next leaves, but so it goes. I learned this from watching old episodes of “Gardener’s World” with Monty Don, now available on Amazon Prime. When I am too tired to do much of anything, I’ve been watching that show. I’ve learned a lot, despite the climate in Britain being so much milder than in Maine. For example, I learned that dead plant stalks can sometimes provide beautiful winter structural elements.

Despite feeling like I didn’t have enough energy for everything the garden demanded this year, I got caught up into a new idea. I blame Margy because she put a cedar raised-bed kit into our Amazon save-for-later list. Now that the fruit trees are so much larger, it hasn’t worked as well to grow kale or other veggies around the perimeter of their circular beds. So after some further research, we purchased a kit for a 3′ by 6′ by 11″ raised bed. (I know most permaculture people buy wood and build their own, but sometimes you just need a kit to make it happen. So it goes in our world.)

We are going to place it next to the hugelkultur bed, with a 3 foot path in between, leaving three feet on the other side towards the hazelnut hedge. I’ve marked the space, loosened the soil there with a garden fork, and the other afternoon, I just sat on the ground slowly weeding out the crab grass as evening fell. Not much energy required, and it felt good to have my hands in the dirt. I also ordered some hardware cloth to make a barrier below the raised bed against the many small tunnelers who seem to delight in our wood chip paths. Once everything arrives, we will fill the bed with layers of seaweed, leaves, compost, soil, and so on, giving it the winter to percolate.

Still too much to do in the garden, but I feel delighted by the autumn colors, and the opportunity to learn and plant and grow, and sometimes just to lay in the hammock as the days grow shorter.

Balance

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Today at 4:21 a.m. marked the transition from Summer to Fall called the Autumn Equinox. Today the night is equal in time to the day. It is a festival of balance.

Photo by Margy Dowzer

Photo by Margy Dowzer

I feel a bit out of balance, staying up too late, waking with a headache, feeling like I have too much to do, and a bit rattled by all of it. But I took a walk in the beautiful cold crisp morning, and felt the warm sun on my face. I took time to journal, and listen to what the Mystery within might offer to me.

Here is what I heard from my old old grandmother: “You can always choose to step into balance at any moment. Do so now, on this day of balance between light and dark.”

And then I felt a sense of joy and peace in my heart. May you also find the way to step into balance today!