The house smells like October
Simmer pot is on, which in this house means autumn has been officially declared. Peel from two oranges, three cinnamon sticks, a palmful of whole cloves, a sprig of rosemary, a few coins of ginger and a handful of cranberries the grandkids didn't eat. Cover with water, lowest flame, top it up every half hour.
It isn't for drinking, it's for the house. I stir it clockwise and think about who's coming for Thanksgiving and what I'd like the kitchen to feel like when they walk in. Warm. Forgiving. A little chaotic.
Only one rule: when you leave the kitchen, the pot gets turned off. I've scorched enough pans in forty years to know the house spirits don't care for burnt cinnamon.
The garden got tucked in today. Cut back the mint before it plots another invasion, pulled the spent beans, and packed straw around the rosemary with firm instructions to survive one more Vermont winter. It has heard this speech eleven times.
What I don't cut anymore: the coneflower and black-eyed Susan heads. The goldfinches need them more than I need tidy. Forty years ago I'd have had every stem down and bagged. Forty years ago I was in a hurry.
The johnny-jump-ups have seeded themselves into the cracks of the path again, right along the beds Walt built. I've stopped fighting them. Some blessings arrive where they please, and the best thing you can do is not step on them.
Bowing to the old maple
There's an old bigleaf maple on my walk to the bus, trunk thick with moss and licorice ferns, easily two hundred years old. I've bowed to it every morning since we moved to Seattle. My neighbors think I'm very polite to trees. I am.
This morning there was low fog, and as I bowed, every leaf on the lowest branch let go at once. Not a gust. No wind at all. They just came down around me like someone emptying a basket.
Back home, a tree like that would have a shimenawa rope tied around it. Here it has a parking sign. I don't think the kami minds. I stood there in the leaves feeling very much greeted.
One acorn from under the old oak on the ridge, now in my coat pocket, holding my patience for me until spring. The oak dropped about four thousand of them. I don't think it'll miss one.
Three staves for the turning year
I cut my ogham set from fallen hazel years ago, twenty staves, each with its notches burned in. Every autumn I draw three: what to let fall, what to keep through the winter, what to plant in spring.
This year: Beith (birch, beginnings) to let fall, which made me laugh, because I've been starting new projects compulsively. Coll (hazel, wisdom) to keep. And Ailm (pine or fir, depending on who you ask) for spring: clear sight, the long view.
So: fewer beginnings, more finishing, and a long look ahead. The trees are blunt when they want to be. Back to my half-laid hedge, which I'm going to finish before I start anything else. Probably.