Surviving November

When November comes around, I find myself drawn to certain things – particular types of books and movies. It's the general gloom of November that puts me in a mood. It's gray and cold. Winter has just begun and seems to stretch endlessly before me. I always feel my age in November. Even as a young man, I sensed time sliding away more rapidly when November rolled around. I wrote some pretty moody November poetry in my young poetic years – another year is going, and with the year go I – that sort of stuff. What are these things I'm attracted to – the books and movies? They are interrelated – and mostly centered on Dickens and Shakespeare. 

I have to be in a special frame of mind to tackle reading Dickens. After Shakespeare, I consider him the greatest English author and I love his novels. I have a complete set of them and I've read them all at least once and some of them many times. Reading Dickens requires a sort of immersion into his world, a mindset that I can only achieve on occasion. When I'm wrapped up in a Dickens novel, it is intense. The characters become so real, I actually miss them when I finish a book. To satisfy my Dickens craving when I can't commit to a long and intense reading, I sometimes turn to the screen. There are some great film adaptations of Dickens. The BBC's productions of Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit are particular favorites. There is also a pretty good filmed version of Nicholas Nickleby. I have never found a version of A Christmas Carol that does justice to the book.

This time I decided to attempt a novel. I didn't know which one at first. I scanned the spines of the books on the shelf and the characters from each of them sprang to mind. Above all, it is Dickens' characters that shine. I considered several titles and then settled on the book that was my eighth grade introduction to Dickens, Great Expectations. And away I go into the world of Pip and Able Magwitch, Joe Gargery and Estella, and the fabulous Miss Havisham. 

My longing for Shakespeare is a mixture of the printed word and movie adaptations of his plays. Reading Shakespeare's plays has its challenges. They are meant to be seen and especially, heard. When I read them, I have to read them aloud to myself, which limits the times and places I can do that. I find that it usually annoys people to be reading aloud in most circumstances. I love the film adaptations of the plays done by Kenneth Branagh. His Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Hamlet (1996), and Love's Labors Lost (2000) are excellent. There is a great version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) directed by Michael Hoffman. Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967), Romeo and Juliet (1968), and Hamlet (1990), and Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996) are great films. To while away the bleak November hours wrapped up in these films is nourishing food for my winter starving soul.

So I prefer to watch rather than read the plays. The Sonnets are a different story. I usually read through them at least once a year, and almost always in November and December. There are one hundred and fifty-four sonnets. I always start at the beginning and limit myself to just a few per day. To try and read too many at once decreases the likelihood of contemplation, and they deserve contemplation. Sometimes I get stuck on just one and I read it several times. I have my favorites, Sonnet 29, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes," is one, as is Sonnet 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds." And Sonnet 73 is another.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs that shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which, by and by, black night night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Perfect food for my November mood. My mood will change as the Holiday Season begins – Thanksgiving and then Christmas and New Years bring happy distractions. Then there will be family and food and decorations and food and celebrations and food and music.

We have a rule of sorts at our house that we don't start listening to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving. We don't enforce it very well. In fact, I think we break it every year. I broke it last week. Monday morning was snowy and cold. Everyone left for their various workplaces and I was home by myself and I couldn't help it. I loaded up a queue of Celtic Christmas albums. As soon as the music started, a wave of nostalgia engulfed me. Music, especially Christmas music, is powerful stuff. It stirs deep emotions and memories. I love it.

Monday.

I had a list of projects I wanted to accomplish during the week. It wasn't a long or taxing list. We've come to duller days. Nothing much needs to be done outdoors now except the regular chores, but there were two outdoor items on the list – putting up Christmas lights, and stocking the woodpile on the porch. The indoor list items were rather light, mostly involving houseplants and general tidying. Now that I'm more housebound, I find fussy projects to occupy my time like rearranging books. While we were working on the living room, books got moved around and shuffled. I worked on arranging them properly off and on all week. Some I put in alphabetical order by author (novels and church books), others in chronological order by publication date (my set of Dickens and Zane Grey novels), or by subject and era (history books). I like the feeling of restoring order to what had become randomness. 

The Zane Grey novels in chronological order by publication date.

Chronological Dickens.

I officially retired the rain barrel on Tuesday. I needed to empty it before the ice got too thick for me to break. I smashed the ice, it was three inches thick, and dumped the water out, then flipped the barrel over. I won't be able to use it again until late March or April next year. Now I have no choice but to carry water down from the house.

I started putting up Christmas lights on Tuesday afternoon. I began down at the barn and on the front of the house. I ran a string of lights along the top of the chicken yard fence. I also put lights on the fence at the head of the driveway. On Wednesday and Thursday I worked some more on the front of the house. I put lights on the first story around the front porch. Hannah always puts up the lights on the second story because I don't do heights, so that's yet to be done. We'll work on that this week.

Wednesday morning was odd. It had snowed a little during the night, just a light layer of fluff, but there was fog when I looked out before dawn. As the sun came up, it cast the world in an eerie light. It looked very November.

Frozen, foggy Wednesday morning.

Later, the sun burned off the fog and the rest of the day was bright. It warmed just enough to melt the snow. I took a walk through the garden midday. It had been a while since I last patrolled it. The bare November garden is a bedraggled thing. The snow at least covers and hides its faults. Without the snow, it just looks sad. As I walked along, all the projects I never completed haunted me. Now everything will have to wait until some warmish early spring day and that's a long way off. I was happy to find a few violas blooming. Of all the flowers in my garden, they are the hardiest.

Violas in November.

At the end of my walk, I checked the temperature in the greenhouse. It was 78°. I stepped inside and sat on my bench and took a short nap in the warm sunshine. I hope to be spending a lot of time doing that in the coming weeks. I crave the sunshine.

On Wednesday afternoon I also rearranged my vinyl record albums. First I sorted them into genres – Classical, Christmas, Big Band, Showtunes, etc. Then I sorted the classical albums into periods – Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern – and then arranged them alphabetically within their periods. It took me a long time to organize them. While sorting through them, I had to stop now and then and listen to some of them. As I listened, I remembered when I discovered that composer, and when I acquired the album. After the vinyl, I did the CDs the same way. I wonder sometimes if I might have obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Records and CDs organized.

I found three more dead hens last week, one on Monday morning, one on Tuesday evening, and another on Thursday morning. I'd had the live trap set, but hadn't caught anything. I found some tracks in the snow on the ramp at the upper part of the barn one morning, but they weren't very clear. I thought they might be skunk. Then later in the week I found digging in the front yard and that's definitely skunk activity. So it looked like I was dealing with yet another skunk. I counted my chickens one evening after they'd gone to roost. A few weeks ago I had 34. Now I'm down to 27 – 3 roosters and 24 hens. And one peacock and five noisy guineas. I needed to catch the killer.

Tracks in the snow.

Skunk diggings in lawn.

I ventured out on two days last week. I got a haircut on Tuesday and I went to my acupuncture appointment on Thursday. I enjoy both of those things. I always have a friendly chat while Mrs. Richard cuts my hair. She likes houseplants and birdwatching, so we have plenty to talk about. And my acupuncture appointment is always a pleasant experience. I don't really talk much to my acupuncturist. I don't really see her that much during my time there. We talk for a few minutes, she puts the needles in, and then leaves me alone to relax. I usually doze off. I always come away feeling better. So those were two out-of-house excursions last week.

There were other, bigger adventures afoot. Hannah's birthday is this Wednesday and her sisters planned a surprise Sisters' Trip for her. They'd been planning it for months and dropping hints about it all week. On Thursday afternoon Miriam and Sarah picked Hannah up from work and they drove to the Cleveland area where they met up with Rachel. They spent the weekend at an Airbnb and explored lighthouses on Lake Erie and went birdwatching and had a great time together. They'll be back later this evening.

Beachcombing on Lake Erie.

They saw a murmuration of starlings.

They look cold, but happy.

So Stacey and I were the only ones home from Thursday on and that meant a very sedate weekend. Friday while Stacey was at work, I spent more time working on Christmas lights. It was a raw morning. The kind of damp, cold weather that seems to penetrate to the bone no matter how many layers of clothes you wear. I couldn't wear gloves because I needed nimble fingers, so I could only work in short intervals before coming inside to warm my hands. The gutter along the back porch is new, so I had to put up new clips on it to hold the lights. That meant hauling out the ladder. With the clips up, I strung the lights. They look very festive. We won't turn them on until the day after Thanksgiving.

Yesterday we ran errands up in Wellsville. It was another dreary looking day. I went to the library while Stacey visited a member of the branch in a nursing home. After I picked her up, we went shopping for food for a needy family for Thanksgiving. Then we delivered the food out in Harrison Valley. Finally we did some shopping for our own house at the Amish bulk food store. With Thanksgiving coming this week, we had to make sure we had everything we will need on hand. While we were gone, our friend Stan dropped by and left us six jars of his excellent garlic dill pickles on the back porch. Later, I had to run out again to the dairy, so I dropped by his house to deliver some cider and relish to his family. I like sharing.

Toward the end of the day, the sky cleared and blessed us with a bit of sunshine. I took a walk out through the orchard and the big garden just to see how things are. The sunshine was bright, but not warm. The garden and orchard looked empty, like those "bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang." 

Out in the big garden looking through the orchard toward home.

Early this morning I got a phone call from a neighbor driving by on the highway telling me that there was a skunk in my trap. I'd planned to go down in a few minutes anyway and, not expecting to find anything, I'd dressed for church. Now I had a skunk to take care of. Just my luck it would wait until Sunday to get caught. I pulled my overalls on over my church clothes and donned my barn coat and boots and went down and took care of it. I tried to be extra careful, but I went to church smelling a bit skunky despite my efforts. I hope that's the last of my chicken killers, but I'll continue to keep the trap set just in case.

Church attendance was light, but the talks and the lessons were good. I missed having Sarah, Miriam, and Hannah there. This being the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we sang two great hymns, Come, Ye Thankful People and Prayer of Thanksgiving. I love the line in Come, Ye Thankful People, "All is safely gathered in ere the winter storms begin. God, our Maker, doth provide for our wants to be supplied." I feel very thankful for that. I have a feeling we have some big winter storms ahead of us and we've been blessed and our wants have been supplied. I'm especially thankful that later this week our house will be filled with family gathered together to enjoy a celebration of the bounteous blessings God gives us. I hope you have a festive and happy Thanksgiving!