The seasons are changing again, like they do. I really do enjoy autumn, I just have to keep reminding myself that I do. Back home, it meant cool evenings, crunchy leaves, and of course Halloween and the family Thanksgiving. I moved to New England six years ago, and here, it just means it's time to get ready to hunker down for winter. All our family is spread out, so Thanksgiving is small (and it's effectively winter by then anyways), and the area we live in is so rural we don't even get any trick-or-treaters. Winter basically starts in November and the spring flowers don't show their faces until March at the earliest. Almost half the year is cold and ice and snow and cold, and cold. Spring and fall are my favorite seasons (which makes sense, as they're times of transition) but they really seem to just fly by.
There's a giant patch of goldenrod in our front yard, in full bloom. I love it. Yellow is such a cheerful color and the late blooms seem like a last-ditch effort to hold on to summer for as long as possible. I had planned to make an infused oil of it, to try and bring a little bit of summer through the winter with me, but after reading this post over at When Weeds Whisper, I decided to follow her lead and do an infused honey instead. I bought some local honey at the farmers market last weekend, and I was really excited, planned to do two pint jars. Then as I'm out gathering, I see all the bumblebees buzzing around the blossoms, and it hit me - these were the last flowers, and the bees needed them more than I did. So I satisfied myself with enough to just make one jar. I probably still could have done both - it really is a huge patch of goldenrod, but I would have felt bad.
I don't know what I'm going to do this winter. Last year's was ridiculous, we wound up with about eight feet on the ground and had to hire a backhoe at one point to dig us out after the regular plow ran out of room to put the snow. They called it the hundred year storm - as in, the kind of storm you only see once in a hundred years - and it was certainly record-breaking. But I'm afraid that this year will be the same. I almost want to move back to somewhere more temperate, but I've really started developing a relationship with the woods this past year and couldn't just leave them.
I'll just have to keep reminding myself - winter has a place, just like everything else. Death has a place. It wipes out the green of summer to make room for the pinks and blues and yellows and purples of spring to peek through again. If nothing else, it keeps the ticks from eating me up too bad. I'll have to spend some days out in the forest this winter and pay attention to what's going on, besides everything being dead or sleeping.
