October

Even though our recent temps are higher than average for mid-October, autumn is coming anyway! The trees are turning, albeit later than most years. The grapes have just been harvested and their smells still linger along Routes 5 and 20 for all the traffic going by. And, here's this summer's growth on one of my little evergreens, planted maybe 4 years ago now. Its growth is rather slow now but I know that it will go faster in years to come. Meanwhile it's pretty well protected by the larger trees nearby and, as you can see, the leaves and the ground coverage.

The fact that we are having a lot of (somewhat unwelcome) Canada geese who are spending their days grazing on our lawn, made me want to share Mary Oliver's lovely autumn-time poem, "Wild Geese."

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.