Autumn

I reached for a jacket half an hour ago, the first time for what seems like many months. It's drizzling outside, yellow pokers are flowering in the garden and the dogwood trees that are away from the septic drain have their rich red, orange and yellow colours. They have had enough this season and are happy to disrobe for winter rest. Those close to the drain, with access to plenty of moisture through summer and March are still lush and green and will hold  for a while, till colder temperatures convince them to let go. They are heavy in flower bud, programmed for their October show.

Robbie caught four mice in a trap the other day, there's clothes on the horse in front of the gas heater; it was used on Saturday to help defrost the meat taken from the freezer for the barby; we haven't had that problem for a while. I resist yet, carting wood in and lighting the fire. Once I start it's a daily chore, for up to 150 days, with only the odd warm day's break.

I need a fine warm day to bed the bees down, then forget them, till spring rushes them to new life. Many eucs have a good budset for next season, it could be a biggie, honey wise. It may have been this season, but the good rains sent the trees into prodigious growth and budset for next year, robbing the flowers of the trees' energy.

I'll be busy pruning, renovating, planting into the moist ground, mulching, preparing for the promise of spring and the fresh start. Prospects are good and we are all in reasonable health. What more could I want? A little more time to read, to write, to watch a good movie*, to talk to friends. All that is possible over the next months.

*I've enjoyed movies lately, moreso than I have for years. It's an artform I never really embraced. I watched one the other night called 'Swingblade' starring Billy Bob Thornton, whom I'd never heard of. He wrote it and directed it too. Gee it was good. I'm reading 'Chocolat' by Joanne Harris and am enjoying that too. Maybe it's because I'm 58 now (as of last week) that everything seems better and life sweeter. I don't mind ageing at all if this continues. Maybe I speak to soon, I remember the words of a Simon and Garfunkel song, "How terribly strange to be seventy." But several of my septuagenarian friends seem to be amongst the happiest people I know, so I hope I get there to experience it. Could it be that inevitability is easier to accept than uncertainty, and the older you get there's more of the first and less of the latter, and perhaps that allows less anxiety on a daily basis?

I didn't start out to be searching like this, but that's the beauty of writing, thinking and blogging. You wind up looking for a perspective that can help you handle things. It's said, and I don't doubt it, that people often read many different interpretations of the same painting or poem. The longer I live the more wonder I see and feel, in everything.