New Year's Possibilities

Seed catalogs started arriving today.

Which means that some of my favorite reading of the year begins today as well.

New Year, Old Lessons

2013 begins, with all the promise and all the challenge that each new year brings.

I'm looking forward, as always, to learning -- and re-learning -- some of the old lessons that this land has tried so hard to teach me. I am doing so in hopes of really learning the lessons this time.

In so far as anyone ever does.

That, it seems to me, is one of the great gifts of a piece of land and all that comes with it. The chance to learn and to go on learning, the same lessons year after year, and discovering that the lessons, however often learned, and the learning itself, never grow old.

I love this little farm more than I can say. It has taught me so much, and continues to.

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?