a true autumn day

“Autumn Morning at Eragny” by Camille Pissarro

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love — that makes life and nature harmonize. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
~ George Eliot
(Letter to Maria Lewis, October 1, 1841)

~ autumn equinox ~
(2:49 am eastern time zone)

spring is surely coming

“Springtime” by Claude Monet

Oh, spring is surely coming,
Her couriers fill the air;
Each morn are new arrivals,
Each night her ways prepare;
I scent her fragrant garments,
Her foot is on the stair.

~ John Burroughs
(Bird & Bough)

~ spring equinox ~
(5:24 pm eastern time zone)

a memory you can’t recall

“Autumn Bouquet (Portrait of Vera Repina)”
by Ilya Repin

The mind is never so open as such clear days in the fall,
when the air has a special tang of flowers and frosty iron,
and something flits lightly past you,
a memory you can’t recall,
a dream forever undreamt and forever far beyond.

~ Inger Hagerup
(The Magic of Fjords)

This might be my last post tagged with “pandemic.” It’s been two and a half years! Not that I think we won’t eventually catch covid, but we have gotten our state-of-the-art bivalent booster shot now and we seem to be living in a new world, coexisting with a treatable endemic virus. We’re still masking inside public places but getting more adventurous…

The autumn equinox now seems like a perfect time turn over a new 🍁 and stop focusing on the virus. Yes, the mind is never so open as such clear days in the fall!

maple syrup for sale

sunrise at home, 6:52 am, Spring Equinox
3.20.22 ~ Goshen Hill Maples, Lebanon, Connecticut

In our area the spring equinox comes close to the traditional weekend of the maple sugarhouse open houses, fun places to visit to celebrate spring and see how maple syrup is made. Sadly though, probably due to climate change, the sap stopped running and the last boil of the season happened on Friday, two days before we got to Goshen Hill Maples. The friendly couple running this one, though, had a fire going and boiled water to illustrate the process to visitors.

the little sugarhouse, the evaporator is just inside the barn door
a few of the 700+ sugar maple trees that are tapped
all tap tubes lead to the holding tanks

It seems the days of tapping a tree and hanging a bucket under the spout to collect the sap are gone by. These days tubes bring the sap to the holding tanks and then to the evaporator. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to yield 1 gallon of syrup. One tree will produce about 10 to 20 gallons of sap, or a quart to a half gallon of syrup.

sap is pumped into the evaporator
I get a lesson in bottling (using water) the syrup

We bought two quarts of their maple syrup which should last us for a year. 🙂 I have a salmon recipe that uses maple syrup in the marinade which we have at least once a week. Our days of eating pancakes or waffles with maple syrup are long gone, but we have many fond memories of the deliciously sweet weekend breakfasts.

the great spring murmur

image credit: ArtTower at pixabay

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living. … Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air.
~ Jack London
(The Call of the Wild)

crunch and rustle of leaves

“Autumn Morning” by Grigoriy Myasoyedov

A few days ago, I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different, and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air.
~ Eric Sloane
(Seasons on the Farm: A Celebration of Country Life Through the Year)

in soft silent beauty

“The Harvest Moon” by Samuel Palmer

When we were young
and feeling the need to prove ourselves,
we generated heat and energy
like the noonday sun.
But now we take time to reflect the Tao
and bathe our world in soft silent beauty
like the full moon on an Autumn evening.

An abundance of opinions will generate heat
but accomplish nothing.
You no longer have to comment
on each and every little thing.
You can observe events with a detached serenity.
When you speak,
your words are gentle, helpful, few.
Your silence is as beautiful as the Harvest moon.

~ William Martin
(The Sage’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life)

then maids dance in a ring

“Sounds of Spring” by Franz Stuck

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king.
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring;
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing
Cuckoo, jug jug, pu we, to witta woo!

~ Thomas Nashe
(Thomas Nashe: Selected Works)

autumn equinox in self-quarantine

9.22.20 ~ our pumpkin and gourds

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood —
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

~ Bliss Carman
(A Vagabond Song)

Not only is this our first autumn in self-quarantine, it is my first one without apples since my radiation proctocolitis diagnosis. If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years you know how much I LOVE apples. But they make me ill now. 🙁 In spite of this I wanted to go to Holmberg Orchards to celebrate the equinox anyway. We didn’t pick any apples because Tim doesn’t want to eat stuff I can’t have in front of me, even though I keep telling him he doesn’t have to give things up just because I have to.

9.22.20 ~ morning at Holmberg Orchards

Today was a perfect autumn day…. And there I go, slipping out of fall into autumn…. All right, a perfect fall day, too.
~ Hal Borland
(Hal Borland’s Book of Days)

But it was fun to pick out a pumpkin and some gourds for our garden and the corn maze was open! We felt it was safe enough as everything was outside and everyone was required to wear masks and keep 6′ away from each other. When we got to the corn maze we were happy to see a sign that said there were no dead ends this year, because of the pandemic. You were to just follow the winding path and keep six feet apart. No getting hopelessly lost. Being there early on a Tuesday morning we were the only ones in the maze. Yay! It took us half an hour to walk through it.

9.22.20 ~ our dinner

I am inclined to think of late that as much depends on the state of the bowels as of the stars.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Journal, December 12, 1859)

We had grilled marinated swordfish and green beans for dinner out on the balcony. Simple but delicious and that’s how life has got to be these days. 🙂 Keeping my gut soothed is of utmost importance! I’ve had a few setbacks since the midsummer alcohol fiasco but feel that on the whole, things are better. As far as autumn goes, I’m going to try to focus on the leaves changing colors and long walks in the fresh air and not think so much about apples!