Wind

The weather has been restless since Sunday. Sweeping winds, blowing leaves, grey clouds

rushing across the sky and then parting to let in an almost feverish sun.

Although the snap of the camera's shutter freezes a view in place, the leaves are anything but a quiet carpet of gold. The wind lifts them in swirls and they rise to spin with those being swooshed from the branches of the maples.

Drifts of leaves lie in front of the porch as the wind is blowing from the south.

One yellow leaf.

Caught a second later as it lifts in the wind.

These stems of cornflower were whisking in the wind, swaying and bobbing.

The stiff stems of the monarda are unbowed.

Leaves dance across the back yard.  I have swept them out of the outside cellarway for there is a storm drain at the bottom which needs to remain clog-free in the event of rain with the wind.

Leaves caught in the box hedge outside the bedroom window.

Chester, the skittery cat, watches the effects of the wind from a safe windowsill.

A rugosa leans away from the wind.

Willis chases leaves--there are too many and he is distracted by the possibilities.

                                                      Sally, an autumn-colored kitten.



Leaves are caught in all the border plants.

While we slept through the gusty night, pears dropped from the old tree.

I am headed down the field to pick up such as have not been smashed beyond use.

The sky is darkening.

J. has been keeping watch of the Dopler weather map via his computer.

We've had phone calls this morning from family in WY wondering if we are in the path of the very fierce winds and torrential rains which have thus far stayed north of our area.

The wind draws me outside where I bend into it, my face whipped by hair that cannot be secured even with two elastic bands and two barrettes.

Elemental. Way beyond our knowing, let alone our control.

Wind---restless, portentious, dramatic, just on the edge of fear.

I've just pulled out a favorite old book, the first of the "Eliot Trilogy" [A Bird in the Tree] by English author, Elizabeth Goudge.

An autumnal storm sweeps in at the climax of the story, set in Hampshire, a place I have never been, but the portrayal of the storm is almost universal in feeling.

"The warm, still blue days, and the quiet nights bright with the harvest moon, had left them.  There was a fresh south-west wind today and brilliant masses of sunlit cloud passed like a pageant before it, their shadows sweeping the earth beneath them. Far up, beyond and between their mighty shapes, stretches of sky shone like aquamarine and crystal, cold and tranquil.  The distance was hard and clear, a brilliant royal blue, and the nearer landscape a flung quilt of colour with the bright emerald of the well-watered pasture lands, the pale buff squares of the shorn cornfields, the dark swaying masses of the trees and the cottage gardens blazing with their dahlias and hydrangeas."

And a few pages on: "He got up and went outside and wandered up and down the grass verge of the steep little road between the cottages.  The wind had risen a good deal and the sky was packed with hurrying grey clouds.  The smoke from the cottage chimneys was tossed and torn as soon as it emerged and the donkey's fur was blown up edgeways.  David noticed that the sun, seen now and again between the hurrying clouds, had a halo or wheel around it.  At Little Village they had a saying,

The bigger the wheal,

The stronger the geal.

"There's a gale coming, " thought David.  "Curse it. The end of our fine weather."

The sky to the south just moments before noon CDT.

I'm heading outside in a few minutes into this strange, warm, windy afternoon of mystery and restless movement.

Since I plan to pickup the wind-fall pears, a hard-hat might be advisable.

I'd love to know if some of my readers have favorite passages of prose or poetry which capture the portents of stormy weather.

Later: gathering the windfall pears will have to wait.  As we prepared lunch, rain rushed in and within less than a half hour the temperature had dropped nearly 20 degrees. The wind switched right around to the north. The air is still now, the trees have stopped flailing and beyond the streaming windowpanes a misty dark afternoon hovers.
It has been time for a mug of tea, the familiar old book with its gentle family story. My lap has been crowded with Maisie and Charlie contending for space.
In lieu of picking up pears I think I need to make something richly chocolate.

A Side-Ways Wind

One of the first minature sunflowers to open several weeks ago.

I really got on tip-toe with camera at arm's length to take this photo on Tuesday.

This is the tallest in the clump of sunflowers.

I took refuge for a few minutes in the shade yesterday forenoon and watched goldfinches light on the sunflower heads. I scattered the seeds from two different varieties, didn't thin them.

These have given me great joy, especially in studying individual buds close up.

I've thought whether to let the sunflower heads cure on the stalks to provide for the birds, or perhaps to cut and dry the heads to offer during the winter.

As you can see, the tallest in the clump are about 8 ft.  [You can use J. who is 6 ft tall as a measuring stick.]

Late last evening a thunderstorm rushed through, bringing wind and rain.

Stepping outside this morning I was sorry to see the damage done to my sunflowers.

I collected bale twine, pounded some nails into the garage siding, and attempted to raise the stalks and anchor them.

I succeeded in rescuing several of the smaller plants, tredding on mint and basil as I did so.

Trying to raise a heavy plant which is three feet taller than I am was frustrating and ended in breaking the tall yellow sunflower about a foot from the ground.

Another storm whirled through, sending me inside to watch while tree branches were whipped and rain pelted down.

I cut individual branches of the broken plants and brought them inside.

These buds are curled pig-a-back behind the opening flower.

 I feel more dismayed by the loss of these plants than makes any sense.

They emerged from the ground as small and tentative seedlings, stretched up a foot or so and then suddenly lengthened into an exuberant and colorful thicket.

The space where they stood now seems incomplete.

I'm thinking how disruptive an unplanned change to our personal landscape can be.

I can rearrange a room; if the postion of a chair or table or bookcase turns out to be less than pleasing, the furniture can be juggled yet another way.

When a building is torn down, or a wall goes up, our familiar view is changed.

Spring was just beginning to make its presence known when we purchased this little farm in late March.

We have watched the pastures grow green, trees burst into leaf, weeds grow on the roadsides and in the garden. Each week is new and marvelous.

Each season brings changes, usually so gradually that even though I am watchful, the days and the subtle differences blur.

It will take a few days to register the change in that stretch of garden. Will the remaining sunflowers expand to fill the space?  They are a domineering plant, brazen, dramatic, colorfull.

The birds will miss them too.

December 31, 2009

I was awake at 4:30 this morning and knew immediately that sleep was over for the night.  Meaning to be considerate, I tried not to toss and turn.  The cats knew I was awake and began none too subtle encouragements for me to get out of bed.  I gave in a few minutes after 5:00 when Charlie  plumped his considerable furry bulk under my chin and commenced to purr at full throttle.

Heaving several adoring felines to the floor, I eased from bed, felt about in the dark room for warm clothes and slippers. Followed by a tribe of starving cats [so convincing!] I opened the living room curtains and stood for a moment in the glow of the full moon reflected from an expanse of snow.

I served the cat's breakfast and made a large mug of tea, sat here absorbed in reading.

Just before dawn, the moon slid off to the northeast and there were moments of cold darkness before the rising sun washed the snowy landscape in pale rosey gold.

I turned from the sunrise to see the huge pale round of the moon sinking behind the foothills.  In the few moments it took to snatch the camera, pull on a warm vest and wrench open the front door, the moon had nearly slipped from sight.  No time to fiddle with camera settings and way too cold for comfort!

Still shivering, I stood at the west window to record the glowing foothills as the sunshine gained in strength.

More frost feathers twirled and spun under the east entry overhang.

Grandson D. says they look like hanging "snow bats."

Looking through the south window toward the frozen pond.

Charlie sat on the windowsill watching the world wake up.  When I picked him up his fur felt cold. Here he is sulking at the top of the new stairs, barracaded from entering the attic.  I had attempted to comb snarls from his hair and he felt abused.

J. announced that we would travel to Casper today to buy a shower stall for the upstairs bathroom in the making.  This is a trip of about 2 1/2 hours each way. 

At the last minute he decided to drive our Toyota Rav 4 instead of one of the diesel pickups. We took the "scenic route" from Rawlins Jct, through Jeffrey City [which was never a "city, but is now a nearly abandoned uranium mining town] down to Muddy Gap and thence to Casper.

There are three building suppliers there and J. decided to check them all.  After the first two we were ready to stop for a late lunch.

The wind blows in the Casper area most of the time.  By mid-afternoon when we reached the third builders' supply, it was an adventure just to walk across the parking lot. We chose some prefinished hardwood flooring, selected a shower, picked up a few odds and ends. By the time we drove around back of the complex to load the shower, the wind was brutal and sharp crystals of snow whipped from storage shed roofs, while the tarps covering stacks of lumber snapped and flailed in the icy wind. J. had been told that the shower unit would be boxed.  It wasn't, so we wrestled to strap the thing onto the car's luggage rack. During these few minutes the flung snow iced over the windshield.  We headed out of town through gusts of wind which buffeted the car and sent swaths of snow drifting across the road.

I sensed we were in for a tedious drive home with the laden car bucking the wind.

"Why, "I demanded, "are we driving this silly car when we have two trucks?"

J. who never admits a mis-judgement, replied, "Because the red truck has the water tank on it and Nort'n has developed a vibration which wants checking out before he is driven this far."

["Snort'n Nort'n" being the beloved 92 Dodge pickup.]

We drove through the deepening twilight, between snow covered foothills stained with the deep red-orange of sunset. As the light faded, we watched for the rising of the blue moon.  It sailed low in the night sky, shrouded in clouds of a luminous blue-grey, first behind us and then after the road turned, there it was on our right.

By the time we reached the Junction, the wind had eased and the moon was lifting above the cloud bank.  J. stopped the car in the drive to fill Pebbles' hay bin.  She pounded up from the lower pasture, a dark shape in the silvery light.

We were welcomed home by a surge of cats, protesting that their TEA was hours late. J. lined up their clean dishes and served their treat while I gathered the camera and hauled on Carhartt bibbs against the cold.

I used the "night snapshot" setting on the camera and kept a gloved finger over the flash. The photos are not very well defined, but did capture the strange bronze-tinged aura which surrounded the moon.

Inside now--to sleepy warmth and the company of well-fed cats.

Images whisk through my mind: sun on snow; a herd of antelope surging down a distant hill--as J. remarked--- like a flow of brown water; hawks, wind-ruffled, perched watchful on fence posts and power poles; golden eagles tearing at the frozen flesh of a road-killed deer; the wind--always the battering wind--scourging the brittle brown grass on the high plains, driving tumbleweeds along the fence lines; flinging dry snow across the highway; wind scalding our faces and burning our eyes whenever we leave the car to dash across a parking lot. Coming home--red sunset staining high rocky crags and lingering in molten pockets in the foothills. 

Wind, night, and the full moon following us home, while the hours tick away to another year.

The guest cabin looms in the night.

I pulled on heavy clothes and went back outside at 10 PM, looking for the moon, warning J. that if I didn't reappear in a few minutes it would be good of him to come and save me from freezing to death.

It was much brighter outside than the photos show.  My shadow walked with me. Pebbles heard me wallowing about in the snow and whickered, so I plunged around the north end of the porch and headed for her pasture.

I was startled when this photo appeared in the view finder after I pressed the shutter.  I think "atmospheric" might be the descriptive word? Since I don't drink and don't believe in ghost horses, I concluded that I snapped the photo just as Pebbles snorted out a great cloud of steamy breath.

Ah, a wild creature of the night, with glowering eyes!

My little room glows from within: geraniums on the sill; the books, the comfy battered chair, the sewing machine and the computer--all waiting for me in the warmth. 

As I suspect that I am now well beyond tired, and about to wax sentimental, I wish you joy and peace in the New Year!