Candle moon

last night the candle moon shown through the thick layer of clounds and tangle of branches like a distant candle, it was already a waning moon when it first became visible above the Norway spruce and maples.



February's full moon has other names , the Hungry Moon and the Wolf Moon, but all of it's names tell me that even our ancestors found the month with the least number of days to be the longest month of the year. I wondered if they were still telling stories around the hearthfire , while the eves dripped from an early thaw or the wind howled during a fierce storm, perhaps a heavy wet snow was falling and everyone sat wide eyed and still. Did they tell stories to take thier minds of thier hunger, or the hunger of the prowling wolves. Or if they had given up and just gone to sleep. Perhaps they looked for signs of spring.

I climbed Mount Jewett

I usually don't open forwards, but I did accidentally open this one! That in itself proves there are no accidents.
First of all Mount Jewett is a town, but it is on the top of a hill. A one time thriving village, little is left of it, like many small towns it is melting slowly into the forest it was once carved from.
This photo was taken there, and has been circulating ever since.
One can still buy a T-shirt at the yearly Swedish festival, that says "I climbed Mount Jewett".
Or one can see the remains of the Kinzua Viaduct, a once mighty railroad bridge, standing 301 feet above the valley floor, but that is another post.
Or you can travel a couple miles out of town and see the Bridgeview cemetery, where the image of the viaduct is carved on to several headstones, this was also an excellent point to view the viaduct in its entirety, before it was brought down by a possible tornado. Off in the corner of this cemetary are several above ground graves marking the final resting place of families of Serbo-Croations who escaped war only to be claimed by the Influenza outbreak, and ironic immortality.

Where was I

It has been too long, much too long.
But i just had nothing I wanted to say, I had plenty to say, I always do, but nothing I wanted to write about.
I watched my woods fill up with snow,
I listened for the owls who reamained silent
I decorated for 3 holidays and took the decorations down, each time remembering
I watched the moon wax and wane, in the seldom clear skys
I hibernated.
The groundhog was rousted from his slumber and I have no idea how he ever saw his shadow!!!
Unless of course we count the glare of TV lights, which make an artficial shadow.....that would be a sad comment.
Something has rousted me from mine....for now lets hope it is an early spring.

SNOW???????

There was snow this morning, and plenty of it, weighing down the few trees that still have leaves and the electric wires, and anyone who was trying to travel.
As I rekindled the fire in the woodstove, I tried to think of some good things about winter. Other than the pervasive and comforting heat of the woodstove, the only thoughts that came to mind were that there are no mosquitoes and as someone else someone once said "You don't have to run the water long befor it gets cold."

Good-bye for now, old Farmer

As surely as spring followed winter and spring and summer found me in my garden, for the past 25 years I could be sure of a welcome interruption in my labors . The Old Farmer would walk up to the garden fence and say, "We need rain!" I would walk up to the fence and we would talk about, just about any thing.

Memorable was the the time one of the city campers complimented him on having such tall corn so early in the season, no one ever told that camper he was looking at elephant garlic, not corn.
And the morning he came over giggling like a schoolgirl, and proceeded to tell me that the night before he and my son were sitting on the bench and he told my son the he was "Going to drink a beer, take a shower and go to bed." Jr, who was about 3 said that he was "Going home and drink a pop, take a shower and go to bed."

In recent years the Old farmers health was failing him, it was getting hard for him to get around, his garden got smaller and smaller, and he got frailer and frailer, I saw him only once this spring and 2 days ago a few weeks short of his 80th birthday, he gave up the fight.
He hated winter and I guess that another one was just too much to face.

My Grandfather

Long Ago and far away, in a land called childhood, this was a special time of year. Not because I was going back to school, which I hated. But because we spent so much time at my Grandfather's farm. One of my earliest memories of him is feeding the chickens. I think I was only a little taller than the chickens, and there were a lot of them. They would peck at the feed in my little pail, I tried gamely to scatter it, but I was soooo scared! But my grandfather would urge me on and soon I learned not to be scared. Then we would gather eggs....which was always mysterious to me. Exactly how did that chicken make that egg. I had an idea and I wasn't about to eat any of those. But at this time of year, there were apples, bushels and bushels of them to be picked in the orchard, remnants of it remain. The smell of coal smoke , will always remind me of picking apples. The big treat was to wander up to the edge of the woods and pick hickory nuts, the fragrance of their husks lingered on my hands and I loved it. I recall their mellow flavor and how very hard it was to free the nutmeats from the shell. That mammoth sprawling tree is long gone. I would bring home the husks in my pockets,their fragrance quickly faded.

And before I knew it

I don't think it was ever really summer this year. Or if it was I was absent that day.
I am reminded of Ray Bradbury's story "All summer in a Day"... and may-be it was.