What Part Of This Sign Don't People Understand?

Clearly not the request -- NO BRUSH ALLOWED -- which is actually an instruction, but just as clearly the depositors are beyond instruction.

 No doubt there are tires beneath the non-allowed brush as well.
 Incredible!
And all too typical.

One Last Taste

I had thought that last week's cold snap -- no frost yet, and nights not quite down into the 30s, but still -- would have signaled the end of thistle meals and bees partaking of them.
Evidently not, as witness my discovery this warm and sunny Sunday afternoon.
Bon appetit!
For now, anyway.

Good Day Rainfall

The first chill drizzle of the fall, and not unexpected.

Nor unwelcome. An opportunity for long gazes through water-beaded windows, the world beyond the panes slipping away from the shores summer and their promises and pleasures, and on into the landscape of fall with its different, more contemplative, perspectives.

A good day.

Thistle Down

The butterfly and bee buffet is closing for the season.

But even as it shuts down, preparation for another buffet is well under way.




The winds bringing in a cold front should help scatter the down.




Ensuring another feast, about this time -- thistle time -- next year.

The Sign You Hate To See On A Neighboring Farm

The odds that the land will be bought by a farmer rather than a developer may not be large, but we can hope.

Maybe the difference will be split, and an investor will buy it and lease out the farming rights.

That's essentially what's been done with the land for the last decade and more. I've always enjoyed passing these fields as I come in to my place, and have always used the various stages of work, from planting in the spring tithe stubble of winter as one of my indices of time passing here.



But that's changeless time, season after season of crops, work, rest, and changelessness is an illusion at best.

The auction is about six weeks from now. Not much time to savor something I thought changeless.

But when is there ever?

Who's Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?

October clearly on my mind -- and this farm blog -- I found myself writing of that great October (and all the other months, too), Thomas Wolfe on my other, more wide-ranging (or just less focused blog, Cultivating Keith.

It struck me that some of you might enjoy that piece -- if you know Wolfe's work, you know how aware he was of the rhythms of nature, the power of the seasons, the promise of the land. If you don't know his work (and how it was treated), there's a glimpse in the long post I wrote about him, October, and Of Time and the River:

If you take a look, let me know what you think.

More importantly:

Do any of you read Thomas Wolfe? Of all of our great novelists, he and Faulkner had the most finely developed senses of nature. Both of course have much to say to us today, about nature, and our place in it.  

And They Stayed Gray All Day

Before long we'll be having the other kind of October day and October sky -- brilliant blue and bracing.
But yesterday and today have been unbroken gray, drizzly and misty.
Late in the day the gray began to lessen, letting us know that "before long" means tomorrow, probably

I love October.

Just The Way A Certain Type Of October Morning Is Supposed To look

Gray, rainy, a hint of mist lingering against the rain's efforts to wash it away.
The kind of morning when at least a little time will be spent planning what needs to get done when the skies clear and the ground dries out.

October

The month off to a good start, redolent of and resonant with its transitional nature.

Rain on and off all day yesterday, fog early this morning washed away near dawn by heavier rain. Cool but not yet chilly.

Fall continues approaching this little farm by way of hints, suggestions, subtleties, not yet any large portents but they are out here and they will come.

It is October.