Simplicity...

Busy busy all day… here and there, running errands in town and taking care of things, whilst getting drizzled on.  For it has been another rainy day around here, and cooler winds have brought down showers of autumnal leaves, to the point that the garden is a russet sea of maple leaves and such… and we’ve been rewarded with birds by the dozen of colorful woodpeckers, cardinals and blue Jays, and I've been getting the stiffness and cold out of my bones by going to the garden between rain spells and engage myself in he pleasant task of pulling out weeds weeds weeds… weeds that seem to explode after the rains, like magic.

I’m loving every minute of my days… rain, soft sunshine, the magical light of autumn, flowers swaying to the enchanting melody of the warm blowing winds, birds… myriads of birds and butterflies in my garden, coziness in the morning, breakfast by candlelight, books, reading moments, baking moments… life is filled with such loving moments!

RAMDOMNESS…

I bought two lovely sets of earrings today for .50 each

I also got a gypsy headband.

I want some Jeggings to wear with my boots this fall.

My husband got me the prettiest of rubber rainboots for my birthday. Unique and special… an artist canvas of colorful flowers, from Sakroots. Ideal for sloshing around in rain, snow and any other weather conditions.

Last weekend I met some amazing woman at a convention I attended on my husband’s job. An African American and a white women, both past their 80s.  The name of one “Birdie” the other “Clarabelle”.  Both extraordinary, remarkable human beings with magical names.

I still want a kitty.

After the rains...

It happens every time after the rains---early the following morning.  It is called fog.  

You wake up, look outside, and you are immediately enveloped in it… dense, muffled sheets of white stretching throughout the drowsy landscape as far as your eyes can see...

   

Fog... like some miraculous incense rousing from the fresh wetness of supple floors; widening over the slanting roughness of the land and up the hill that parapets our little white cottage—like a fortress, and up the tips of oaks and maples that on mornings like this, are but relentless ghosts and priestesses and guardsman of the earth…  

Inexplicable wonderful dancing ghosts all over my horizon—fog.  That’s how I see it. And I have been enchanted by this phenomenon, which is compounded of a combination of heat, humidity and rain ever since we first experienced the ordinariness and strangeness of this land. Never had I seen fog in summertime while living up north… how wonderful and beautiful his earth is… and my foggy mornings part of it all—wet, and supple... cocooning my soul and my moments with magic and enchantment.

This is the road off our property early on foggy mornings…

This is the same road a few hours later when the sun had come out and melted away all traces of darkness…

How lovely everything looks under the sweet light of Autumn... I love that our little white cottage is positioned in the hollow of a hill, surrounded by lovely trees in its entirety—living ancient souls, the trees.  Always praising their Creator, always silent witnesses of man’s deeds... 

Trees talking among each others; bending down to pick up a leave that’s fallen off their shaggy green heads, or moving around when no one is watching… and always lifting up woody arms to the pallid wide openness above their canopies in sacred communion…

Two nights ago we noticed that our bedroom was strangely aglow.  Even thought it was raining outside, you could still see moonlight filtering through the windows in bright whispers of silver spilling into the shadows of our room.  We could see that outside the night was unusually bright.  I immediately knew what it was… the October’s Full Hunter’s moon.  

How you ever noticed how the October’s moon always seems brighter?  In reality she is no brighter than the other moons in a calendar year but she seems so because of the path she appears to trace through the stars.

I like to call this particular moon, the “Winter Coming Moon”, because when I used to live up North she was the moon which always reminded me that summer was dissolving away and winter was just around the corner.  We were on the onset of those long dark nights and deep cold.  So the Winter Coming Moon it was.

We went outside late the other night again, wanting to see the moon again, and we did, but it wasn’t a full moon, or the most perfect moon.  Darkness and deep silence enveloping us.  What I truly missed, however, was the songs of the cicadas serenading peaceful summer nights and the lanterns of fireflies illuminating them… a soft voice faintly whispering good-bye, until next summer.  

A day in my life...

Dear diary…. rain continued pouring down throughout the night, and a dark, thundering morning found us having breakfast in the semi-darkness.  

  

The sound of thunder and heavy rain coming in from outside made me think of  the story of Noah’s Ark told in the Hebrew Bible… and we drifted away atop beleaguered waters, safe in our little white cottage—the vessel in which we traveled to safety while savoring a cup of coffee and some pan tostado.  How delicious the entire rainy moment felt. 

The sun came up hours later warming up the earth as it enveloped it in mirth and goodness… I imagined the sun with a vast magical towel in his hands drying up the earth… a towel made out of luminous sunshine and optimism and goodness, which I too, got to wrapped myself with while outside... I felt giddy and all good inside.

The crows were particularly rambunctious this morning… their ruckus were heard loud and clear under the early autumnal sky…

They reminded me of the woman with the lovely voice I met this weekend, a crow of a singer all in black, who asked me when I went to meet her after the program was over, if she could touch my braids.  I know... my hair looks extra frizzy some days, and I totally understood... but I felt as if I was some sorts of a strange wooly type of a creature it had to be petted…

The zinnias are amazing little things...

Only yesterday I was holding those seeds in the palm of my hand, doubtful of what they would become, but today their flowers are the queens and princesses of my garden… all dressed up in pure glory.  I am planning on sowing zinnias all thought-out the garden next spring.

We went for our first stroll on foot through our neighborhood for the first time last evening. We discovered a cute little tiny house which housed a myriads of cats… they were everywhere. Never seen such a thing in my life.  I want a kitty.  Adieu!

Reminder:  Things I should do

Rainy Morning

We woke up to the serenatas of Nature outside our window this morning… rain and thunder spiting out poems in the distance. Love songs that sounded like white noise outside my dreams. It was like silence, but without the emptiness...

Rain that joints sky and earth...

"Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes,
come on, let us sway together,
under the trees, and to hell with thunder.”
― Edwin Morgan, A Book of Lives

Magic under the October sun...

There is something of real magic in the October mornings… I don’t know exactly how to explain it, or where to find the appropriate words… words magical enough and yet simple enough to express what I see and feel and perhaps, you would agree with me that October is the absolute month of enchantment… with everything glowing and blowing, butterflies and squirrels and all the blessed little birds reigning supreme.

Last week a flock of robins invaded the garden.  Mornings were filed with joyful chirrups and tweeds as they bounced around the garden searching for worms under the bluest and loveliest dew-laden mornings I’ve ever seen.    

I remember, back when we lived up North, how the robins would disappear around this time of the year, and we would not see them again until the following February, or early March when they would arrive in flocks and stormed into the whiteness of the landscape like some dark jewels, predicting sunshine and goodness, and always reminding us that spring and hopefulness are the absolute certainty after the darkness of winter.  

I want to believe that this flock of robins that inhabited my garden for an entire week last week before they found permanent housing in the thicket beyond our garden are the same birds that populated our gardens at the house in the roses and that, when they disappeared at the onset of winter each fall, this is where they were bound to… South, to our little white cottage.

Isn’t imagination a delicious thing?  To imagine life as your heart pleases, and find the purest of joy as your soul sees it fit, it surely is an extraordinary thing.

And where do hours go hide?—I ask.  For hours seem to fly away under the October sun and days aren’t long enough or sufficient enough for all the joys that October bestows…  Days and moments bringing night time exceedingly soon upon my soul… night casting away precious day light moments and hours, as shadows recoil the spirit and night urges you to seek refuge inside… until again, the golden jewels of the new morning would reappear, bringing with them a renewed revelry.

I love this time of year.  Do you?

LINKING TO:

TUESDAY GARDEN PARTY

Delicious October

There’s a hole, up above the canopy of trees…

It is the way to the dwelling of light…

and the bed of shadows

And the scorching sun of summer has turned mellow…

And the air is sweet and the woods beyond the garden are calling…

I hear a rustle, and the swish of a skirt in the evening light…

I stop.  I listen and marvel and wonder if...

 
 Perhaps, I would see her again today?

...all of a sudden cantering through the misty solitudes.

A spirit drifting through the woods—on wings of birds, on a blade of grass... on the twinkling lights of summer fireflies.  And sometimes, where my heart wanders, there too my feet would follow close behind... and I'd find magic contained in a drop of rain; sitting on the tip of my tongue I am… when I question the skies and rest on the border of thoughts and words… words too big to understand, words too small like shinning jewels, strange words with the sounds of thunder and the taste of stillness. As if I perfectly knew the old lost road through the woods of my heart…

And my garden of weeds has become a paradise these days.  Standing on the tip of the season it dances, it hovers over my thoughts like a butterfly.  

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening
To Silence."  Thomas Hood

October, month of mystery and enchantment... how I love thee.  How delicious your days are.  Welcome to my world.