Here And Now

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

The yard is frosted over this morning, late autumn is tip-toeing over the land. The maple in the side yard is nearly naked – its yellow leaves left a skirt around its base.

Everything is quiet as I breathe in the chilled air. Nothing disturbs the break of day.

It’s good to be here now and to be alive to witness this.

I know many are suffering all through our Country and all through the world. There is no taking a moment to breathe in the quiet morning air. There is work to do.

Mud needs to be dug out – in some places it’s three or four feet deep. They need helping hands, a kind word, food, and rest.

I’m sorry that there are people who believe that officials are holding back funds or national guard workers when those officials are there to assess what’s needed. I wish we weren’t easy prey for mis- and dis-information.

There are good people everywhere but there are also those who delight in causing harm.

Maybe we’ll lose this experiment we’ve been privileged to have the last few hundred years, and maybe a dictatorship with the censorship and grueling conditions of such rulers will cause regret in those who welcomed it and helped usher it in, but it will be too late then. There will be no more speaking out.

History and living examples of authoritarianism are begging us to see what happens under those conditions, but sometimes something set in motion has to play out.

Much like the season turning, leaves falling, and frost deadening the bright summer growth, spring will come again. I just hope it’s not before years of winter.

The Hummingbirds’ Departure

September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Ruby Throated Hummingbird on branch — https://columbusaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ruby-throated_Hummingbird_TBenson.jpg

September 8 was the last time we saw the last hummingbird at our feeder, which hangs from the porch beam, and we often watch out of the big window that looks onto the front yard. I don’t normally notice the date, just that they’re gone, but this year it felt like a little grief. Maybe because these last few years have been filled with so much loss.

There were three ruby-throated hummingbirds who arrived in the last days of April or the beginning of May.

The feeder is four sided, with four perches, each in front of a red metal flower petal containing a tube for the hummingbirds to extract the sugar water ‘nectar’, but the hummingbirds guarded their turns at the feeder ferociously – fighting each other off, with each barely drinking for fighting so much.

“There’s enough for everyone,” my partner or I would call out sometimes, but they all wanted the bounty alone. I imagine they would fight even if we had four separate feeders.

We didn’t see any babies this year, and I wonder what happened.

For the first time ever, I saw a hawk swipe a robin chick from its nest with the distraught mother screaming out and attacking the hawk as it tried to speed off – but to no avail.

The hummingbird’s departure is the end of summer for me, even though the temperature this year has remained in the 80°F’s and 90°F’s. Climate change is well and truly here.

I, too, have the pull to move on though – but where? It’s not so easy to pick up and leave when you’ve never learned to pack light. I’ve also never liked change, but I’m drawn to it anyway, and I’m constantly changing – whether it’s hairstyles, or clothing, or organization (ha!).

It’s the big changes that cause me the most anxiety.

Like the hummingbird, maybe I have an internal clock telling me it’s time to go – but where? I have no homing instinct or intuition – and where is my ancestral home? I’m a mutt, as so many of us are. Would it be Canada, or Ireland, or Scotland, or England, or France?

Life has one true caution: “Adapt, or die.” Maybe that’s what my subconscious is trying to make conscious. Prepare, it urges. Maybe I interpret that as “leave”, when it just means “get out your warmer clothes.”

I know that acceptance and adaptation are paramount to survival. All of us creatures are constantly adapting – and we’re good enough at it that we haven’t wiped ourselves out – yet….

Time, Time, Time

September 22, 2022September 22, 2022 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I hear Tom Waits singing the refrain: “Oh it’s time, time, time…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAB4uGGquX4

It’s more the song’s tone rather than the lyrics that make me think about our time-based life.

The garden so green, so colorful – so heavy with tomatoes, beans, corn, squash, and flowers just a few weeks ago is emptier – strewn with scraggly vines and stalks – the last ripening food and flowers know the end is near. The tomatoes will continue to ripen until the frost comes, but they are the last stalwarts of the garden.

I reluctantly pulled out my fall clothes suitcase today after seeing the forecast of cooling temperatures this week, with colder nights.

I folded up my shorts and tank tops, my flip-flops will overwinter in the closet.

Autumn is a beautiful season. I have always liked it, but I see it differently now. I have grown and changed. My perspective has expanded, but also contracted.

Summer used to seem longer. It used to be full with friends and parties and nightlife and doings. It’s not that it couldn’t be again, it’s that I’m not that person anymore. I do go out to events at times, but it is not like being in your twenties. I don’t have the energy I had back then. I was biologically as well as psychologically different – and that is okay. I’m not railing against that. I’m just noticing.

Of course there is sorrow – there’s grief in every season, every change. I am grateful that I am aware of the subtle changes now. I have appreciation for so much more than I used to, but I was always appreciative of nature and the earth’s beauty and bounty.

It’s easy to look back and be an “armchair quarterback” about my life – but that’s not fair or accurate because I didn’t have the information that I do now – and I likely wasn’t supposed to.

I wasted so much of this precious commodity called time. I knew it even when I was younger, but I wasn’t able to act differently then. I am more able now, but not by much. I have found strategies that help me, but they’re not foolproof. Platitudes are easy. Life is not, or it hasn’t been for me.

I can be joyful in the struggle. I can be miserable too… I’m more often just moving through my day, working on or completing tasks.

I had grander visions for my life – high aspirations. I think it gave me goals to work toward. I think I have done pretty well with what was handed to me.

Time’s drumbeat throbs more loudly now, but it may be what I need to finish up my work, and do all I can to have who and what is important in my life, and let go of the rest.

Season’s Greetings

September 4, 2015October 6, 2019 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

August is the beginning of Druid autumn, I found out several years ago when telling a friend that I feel mournful in August, even though it’s still summer. Learning that the Druids considered August the beginning of autumn resonated with me, and gave me a place for my sadness this time of year.

It’s now September, and the physical signs of change are showing. Red and yellow veined green leaves began spotting the road under the maples about a week ago. Some are fully red now, and although a harbinger of the coming cold season, they are so pretty.

I picked up several of my favorites, and as my mother showed me when I was little, I placed them between sheets of waxed paper and ironed them together. I put a rag underneath and on top of the waxed paper, and kept checking to make sure it was working.

Pressed autumn maple leaves

My S.O. wasn’t all that impressed when I showed him later, but its a simple craft helping me ease into autumn. I’m sure I could have created something more sophisticated, but I also enjoyed its childhood link.

As the earth has moved in its orbit, the garden is now burgeoning with tomatoes, green beans, squash, carrots, and late corn – harvest time well under way. Maybe I’ll learn to can food this year, but it feels too much like work… 🙂

I suppose we could dry the tomatoes, freeze some of the corn, carrots, and green beans, as well as what we’re doing, which is making as many recipes possible with all the fresh food.

It’s also nice to know where and how our food was grown, and I feel more connected to our land than before I started gardening.

The cooler breezes are more welcome than the humid dog days we’re leaving behind, and sleep is more restful with cooler air too.

I’m not ready to give up summer, and wish it lasted at least another month, but I’ll savor all the warm days ahead, and do my best to accept rather than resist – or figure out how to move to warmer climes!