"Throughout this long flow of the seasons,

life in an infinite variety of forms. life dormant in bur
and bud, in burrow and pupa-case, life biding its time,

would respond to the increasing warmth."

Wandering Through Winter

Edwin Way Teale

But today our winter chapter begins.

"Now as I stand 

Before the the window and attend

The sailing, flurrying flakes, the whitening land

I seek again in vain some clue or key

To liberate the guarded mystery.

This much, no more I know:

That science,  fixed to finite laws

Is helpless to unveil 

The supervening cause

And so, once more, I fail.

Now in my eighth decade, no wiser now 

Than the spellbound child
who first beheld beguiled, 
Long seventy years ago
Enchanted snow."

                                               Enchanted Snow 
                                          Melville Cane

“That country where it is always turning late in the year. 

That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; 

where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and

 midnights stay. That country composed in the main of 

cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries 

faced away from the sun. That country whose people are 

autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people 

passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”

Ray Bradbury

The quotes present two views of autumn. The pond two

weeks ago, drained for the winter there were large numbers

of robins and a few ducks taking advantage of the food 

exposed by the expanse of mud this revealed.

"Though we have not yet had a frost, the chill of early

autumn has come into the house, perhaps in the tattered

carpet bags of the field mice moving into the the cellar for 

the winter. Falling leaves have begun to blow past the window,

the lovely yellow leaves of time."

                   Local Wonders

                                        Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

           Ted Kooser

"Memories from age three or age five put on the costumes of dreams.

Things were happening then just exactly the way they happen now,

 but those things seem to be rich with inner life and happy 

discovery, and a fuzzy sense of the world."

 from Love and Irony: 

Postcards from a Child of the New 

York School

Katherine Koch

A few weeks ago the aphids were 
flying everywhere I noticed that they were 
particularly thick on my Red Leaf Rose, 
but help was nearby, the House Sparrows
 flocked to the rose alternating between the 
bird feeder and grabbing mouthfuls of aphids.
This allowed me to enjoy their antics and 
quiet beauty.

This also encouraged a bit of research on aphids. 
Spring aphids are parthenogenetic, the population 
hatching from eggs is comprised entirely of females
who then switch to vivipary or live birth without males.
Towards the end of summer they produce a winged 
population consisting of both males and females which
allows them to spread to new host plants.

The Prairie Gardener Book of Bugs
Nora Bryan & Ruth Staal

One thing that I noticed while watching the sparrows was

this Grey Squirrel, it came directly down the Amur Cherry 

ran thru the area under the feeders where the squirrels normally

feed grabbed a piece of gravel, bit it and ran away with it.

A week of so later it did the same thing.

I still have a fuzzy sense of the world.

"I watch 

the lamplight's clear pool 

on the ancient pinewood planks 

fall through cracks and knotholes 

onto the lives of mice as starlight 

filters through the window 

and falls on me."

from How I Understand Eternity

Brian Swann