In November, my life changes gears. Gone are the quick and busy days when there was always something to do outdoors. The garden is done for the year. The days are short and cold. The nights are long and cold. There are no more flowerbeds to tend. No more food to harvest. Now I shift into a lower, slower gear when my time outdoors tends to shrink to the just the necessary things – doing the daily chores, taking the walks I need in order to maintain my sanity. For the next long months, my life will become more interior than exterior as I withdraw into the house and into my mind. The only gardening I’ll do is tending to my houseplants. I’ll spend more time reading books, listening to music, watching birds at the bird feeders. I’ll work on more sedentary projects like family history research and making paper plans for next year’s garden. I’ve already begun compiling the list of books I want to read from now until May and the music I want to explore. I’ve started stacking books on the night stand by my bed and seed catalogs on the desk by my computer. Like the water in the lily pond and the rain barrel at the barn, I feel my blood starting to cool and congeal. It’s time to bring out wooly socks, warm coats, and gloves. These are the days when I start craving warm, spicy, and rich food – gingerbread, hot cocoa, hot soup, warm bread, and just about anything covered in gravy. All the things I shouldn’t eat.
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| Moon set one morning last week. |
There was a lunar eclipse on Tuesday morning. I was up at 4:30 that morning, not to see the eclipse particularly, but because my brain still thinks that 4:30 is 5:30, the usual time I wake up. It will be another week before that adjustment fully takes place. Anyway, I was up at 4:30 and I looked out and saw the moon in partial eclipse, just a bite taken out of the side. I went back to bed hoping to trick my brain into getting another hour of sleep. It ended up being an hour of recumbent meditation. When my alarm went off at 5:30, I looked out again hoping to see the moon in full eclipse, but it was cloudy. I was disappointed. I like viewing celestial events.
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| The moon in eclipse as I didn't get to see it. |
November’s full moon is called the Frost Moon, and for good reason. With the full moon last week, our lovely Indian Summer weather began its shift back to normal November weather – mornings in the twenties and teens, hard frosts, ice on the pond. During the day it only warms into the forties, and fifties. On a “warm” November day, we might hit sixty and it feels luxurious.
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| Ice on the lily pond. |
Winter is coming and I don’t feel prepared for it, mentally or physically. We’ve done things to be ready – stored away the food we grew over the summer, cleaned the gutters, taken out the screens and put in the storm windows, tucked in whatever we could, but I still feel uneasy. We haven’t laid in enough firewood, for one thing. We kept putting it off and now it’s starting to feel like we’ve waited too long. Getting more firewood is at the top of my list of things to get done as soon as possible. The predictions for this winter are not happy. It looks like La Niña, the cold sister of El Niño, will linger on into her third year. She alters the Jet Stream patterns so that cold arctic air dips deep into North America. Here in North Central Pennsylvania, the forecasters say our winter will be unseasonably cold and snowy. I know there’s nothing we can do about the weather, but we can try to prepare for whatever comes and right now I don’t think we’ve done enough.
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| On a twilight walk last week. |
As for mental preparation, after reading an article, I’m beginning to think that I might have a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder (aptly abbreviated SAD). According to the Harvard Medical School, “People with this condition lose steam when the days get shorter and the nights longer. Symptoms of seasonal affective disorder include loss of pleasure and energy, feelings of worthlessness, inability to concentrate, and uncontrollable urges to eat sugar and high-carbohydrate foods.” Yep, that pretty much sounds like me from October to March – glum and fat. In an effort to alleviate my longing for light, I’ve put a chair in the now empty greenhouse out in the garden where I hope to sit on sunny winter days. Even on cold days, if the sun is shining, the greenhouse temperature rises into the 70's, so it should be comfortable enough to sit and read in the sunshine. We’ll see if it helps.
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| My therapeutic chair in the greenhouse. |
Books are one of my chief tools for coping with the winter. In contemplating what to put on my winter reading list, I’ve taken my inspiration this year from an interview I read recently where Hugh Nibley (a great church scholar) was asked what his six favorite books are. His answer was:
2. The Book of Mormon
3. The Odyssey by Homer
4. Faust by Johann von Goethe
5. Satyricon by Gaius Petronius
6. Chronicles by Jean Froissart
Of those six, I’ve read most, but not all of Shakespeare. I’ve read the Book of Mormon numerous times (we are on a continuous reading cycle in our morning scripture reading). I’ve read parts of The Odyssey. I’ve never read Faust, but I know about it. I’ve never read Satyricon or Froissart’s Chronicles either. So that’s what I plan to read (or attempt to read) over the winter – the classics starting with five of the six on Nibley’s list. It is an ambitious goal. Luckily, we have a set of books, Great Books of the Western World, that will help me. My father bought the set before I was born and it was always on our bookshelf when I was growing up. I inherited it when my parents divested themselves of most of their books back in the 90's. It has 54 volumes that run in chronological order starting with Homer and ending with Freud. The volumes range from literature and history to science and political theory. I can read Homer, Shakespeare, and Goethe from it. I’ll have to get Petronius and Froissart from the library. I’m excited to embark on such a great mental adventure.
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| My much-battered set of Great Books of the Western World. |
As for my music list, there are plenty of my old favorites on it – Bach, Mozart, and Chopin, but I’ve also decided to delve into Italian opera. I only know bits and pieces of it, mostly the most famous arias by Verdi and Puccini. There is so much more I’ve never explored. That will be another fun adventure.
All week long I worked on painting signs. Yesterday was the Holiday Craft Fair in Genesee and Stacey wanted signs to take for display and to sell. We had several signs left from a craft fair in August, but Stacey wanted some done in Christmas colors, so I painted two more using red, green, and white. Of course when painting, I always relish the chance to watch Perry Mason while I wait for paint to dry. Miriam was also busy during the week baking bread and brownies to sell at the craft fair. We went in the morning and set up our wares at the fire hall in Genesee. I didn’t stay, but Stacey and Miriam spent the day there.
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| Working on signs. |
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| At the craft fair. |
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| Miriam's sourdough bread. |
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| Miriam's brownies. |
With Stacey and Miriam at the craft fair and Hannah away visiting friends for the day, I was home alone most of the day. It was a chilly, rainy day, so I wasn’t tempted to attempt anything outdoors. Instead, I tidied the house and did some indoor gardening. I re-potted my amaryllises. Over the years, two bulbs, one white and one pink, have multiplied into eight bulbs. They spend the summer in their pots outdoors. In the fall, I bring them into the woodshed for a while. Then I re-pot them and bring them indoors. If all goes well, they will bloom sometime between Christmas and Valentines Day.
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| My re-potted amaryllises. |
We don’t start Christmas too early in our house. Our rule is no Christmas music or Christmas movies until the day after Thanksgiving and no indoor decorations until the first week of December. Outdoor decorations are another matter. We used to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to put them up, but we’ve found that to be a risky rule. Some years winter has set in by then and putting lights up outdoors is a misery. So now we try to have them up before the weather turns cold even if it’s before Thanksgiving. This year we might have waited a little too long. I got the lights out last week when the weather was still nice, but we were too busy to put them up. Now the weather has turned. The rain that began on Friday and kept on through Saturday and today is turning to snow. The daytime high temperatures this week are only expected to reach the mid 30's. That box of lights is going to sit there a while longer until necessity forces us out into the cold. But one way or another, the lights will go up. We can’t have Christmas without lights.
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| Christmas lights waiting to go up. |
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| Before church this morning. |
This morning when I went down to do the morning chores, there was a light dusting of snow on the coldest surfaces, the tall grass, the tree branches, anything up off the ground a few inches. By the time we left for church, it was snowing harder and the lawn was turning white. The drive to church was, I will admit, pretty with the snow decked trees. By the time we came home, the temperature had risen to 34°, just warm enough to melt most of it away. So we are home, there is a fire burning in the wood stove. Lunch preparations are underway. Miriam and Hannah are making music in the music room. I’m thinking about a nap as soon as we’re done with lunch. Looking at the week ahead, it seems like winter is asserting itself. I will be fussing with houseplants, doing family history and starting on my new reading list – “Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.” Welcome to winter.
