whining--fall back, oh yeah

Last year I had the same trouble; change the clocks back an hour, and I am totally disoriented for weeks, as to day and night. Im fighting sleep from 9PM on, knowing if I do give in I'll be awake and staring at 4 the next morning, which is what happened today.
Food I can deal with, since I can eat at almost any hour, with no real problems. But the dark this early seems to make the evening slope along like a kid who doesnt want to come in yet at sunset. The hours from 7-9 at night are endless.

I just wish they'd leave it all alone, put us on summer time and be done with it.

Woodshed door

wood's in, shed's stuffed full. Haven't had this much inside this early (this was end of October) in several years. It's a gooood feeling.

Now I have to force myself to use it.

A very small thing

This morning I happened to be up just before 5 AM, and as I often do went out on the porch to admire the clear cold sky. The traffic sounds on the highway (five miles away, but sound does travel) had just begun to pick up, prior to the morning commute.

At 5 AM sharp I heard the town clock (equally five miles away) chime out the hour. This is not something i've ever heard at any hour from here, but thanks to a gentle east wind, it was clear, distant, but not at all faint. The town clock, still operated by levers and gears and a great deal of personal attention, still keeps whacking good time.

And now its snowing, a steady, damp, large-flaked snow, drifting down, sometimes rain, sometimes not.

The old guys

I have been exploring Bob Dylan's later albums, one in particular, "Modern Times" which is apparently one of three recorded as a kind of trilogy. I have yet to find them in the local stores, but they'll show up sooner or later. What I love about this particular one is the looseness, the lyricality of the whole thing. He's 69 now, and still good. I listen to this and hear shades of Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson, some of the much younger Dylan, but none of the anger that fueled his first albums. I guess, you get old enough, you stop being angry. It takes way way too much energy.

He also has a Christmas album out, the proceeds of which are going to charity. It's funny, a bit flaky, but the first chrismas album I have ever, ever, bought.

and that got me to thinking about performers and writers who are still producing, singing, writing, well into their 70s and 80s, and still kicking butt. All of them have one thing in common; they are not only dynamite performers, they are also flexible and creative enough to keep changing, morphing, reinventing what they do. They take chances. Every book of W.S. Merwin's is different from the last, both in style and language. The only thing that never changes is his punctuation. Paul Simon is still creating new stuff, (which bodes well for the future) Leonard Cohen, the same.

Ray Bradbury has been writing the same story for ten years, and that's sad. Billy Collins seems to be going the same way, writing "billy collins poems" which no longer invent, they recreate.
It's as if they ran out of gas somewhere along the way, or got scared to take that last step up to the next level. Maybe the rep gets bigger than the talent, and they're afraid of losing that by taking the chance that might hurt the reputation if not the writer. Dunno.

what happened?

Friday I got a notice from my gastroenterologist to remind me that one of those "procedures' is due. In order to get the whole thing rolling, I was to contact the office voice mail, leave my name addy and DOB. Eventually they will send me a packet of information and someone very soon after that (oh boy ohboy) will contact me and set up the date. The letter, which was dated October 6th, arrived on the 16th. Only ten days. Not bad, for a town 20 miles away.

In all of this I will apparently have no contact with anyone involved for any reason at all until they call me, and no contact whatsoever with anyone physically until the driveby surgery, where the Gastro guy comes by says hi, I'm your surgeon, and twenty minutes later Im wheeled out of the operating room, jiggled awake, bundled into the car, and sent home. This is not what I call a fuzzy warm moment.

I had a regular physician type doctor for ten years or more, never met him. I did all my doctor stuff with his PA, and she has been around for so long on many papers she is referred to as MD. Two years ago the doctor I have never met left the practice, (I found out through a third party), and a new doctor has taken his place. I still havent met him, and I still work with the same PA.

At least I see the dentist face to face.

When did doctors start doing this? Im not sure I like it, but it does pave the way for robotics in the future, when you never seen any live folks at all, just robotic arms and scalpels and hypodermics. Press one for yes and two for no. Leave your name, number and DOB at the sound of the beep and one of our AI assistants will contact you.

snow

yep. just a bit, a flurry, really, drifting down over my as-yet-unshedded wood (what's left of it, actually), but totally unnecessary. Im trying pretend it hasnt happened. It's not working.

time killers

there are a bunch of these in this collection, all of them challenging, but the first one is the most fun

http://www.ablestable.com/play/creative/creative1.htm

Garden Wish Books

White Flower Farm catalog (the winter houseplant edition) arrived yesterday, and while I really don't much care for amaryllis and over-sized winter blooms, it's still fun to look at. and WFF is one of those rare breeds of flower catalogs that I save forever, since they not only tell you what they have, but throw in huge amounts of garden information along the way.

However, WFF and I have been having a running battle over what zone Im in. They live in what is, to me, a relatively warm climate in Connecticut, the lower end of zone 5. We live in what is designated on zone maps as the upper end of zone 5. Now the problem comes because we also live 1100 feet above sea level, and that flings us right into a pretty good imitation of zone 4.

I dutifully scratch out Zone 5 on the order blank, and write in 4. They cheerfully inform me that they have my order, and my plants will arrive in plenty of time to plant before the frosts set in. In Zone 5. I have planted bulbs in ground turning to permafrost, shrubs that had to sit in my front hall growing and sulking in early November because there is six inches of snow out there...they apologize, and send me new fall plants the next year as replacements. For zone 5.

The day before the first blizzard of the year.

Now I buy locally.

A winter to grow on

I understand the pressure squirrels and other fuzzy critters must feel this time of year. Gotta get it DONE before snow, yessir.

Breaking up the garden, digging out old, less than interesting flowers in favor of "let's try something new" gives you time to reflect, to think back a bit and forward a lot as to what you'd like to see there. I've been rooting out the 6 foot high African daisies that have taken over half of my long garden, one clump at a time, to the detriment of anything that tries to compete.

I wanted a place to plant potatoes next year, and have planned on a temporary raised bed of old compost there, since they did so well where I had them, in just that kind of soil. But potatoes are hungry beasts, and you have to keep moving them around, to keep them happy. The local wisdom says, 'new ground', and the gardener's best friend, the feed and grain store, says, sulfur powder. Seems to work. And while the ground rests from twenty years of African daisies, i can give some thought as to what I want in there year after next.

We do always seem, as gardeners, to be looking a season ahead, a year ahead, and sometimes, wiht biennials, two years foward. Next year, we say, we'll plant day lilies between those stones, a kind of rock garden. Or maybe something low growing and spreading. And there's no hurry, you have all winter to change your mind. And of course by spring, while you dig for the summer garden, you're planning for next fall, and thinking about the wood you'll need to get in, and where you will put the bulbs next fall when you have to divide them.

I guess we never live in the season we live through.

Love in the Time of Cholera

well, I got through that one. Im not sure that I liked it all that much, but it was readable, had some lovely passages about love and aging and sex; the difficulty for me is dealing with the Latino/South American sensibility, which is very different from mine. I finally realized that the only way to do this is to just let go of comparing apples and mangoes, and concentrate on the mangoes.

I'm pleased that I read it, but I will probably not be digging into it again any time soon. Some books are like that.

Time to strap on the camera and heavy jacket and go for a walk in what's left of the good weather.