Acair Fearann

One eighteen foot (plus) E.B. White (not Old Town) canoe, wood hull with a new Dacron canvas.  Back up in Vermont from whence it came.  Bit late in the year, but there is always next year!

And now I am moving an archeology project into the barn.  It will be out of there by March, or earlier, I promise! Some funny things going on down there these days!

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Stop lighting matches people, these guys aren’t any cheaper in Connecticut than they are in California, even if the fires and equipment are midget sized here! (or why a meeting got cut short today, everybody Literally had a fire to go to) But, I will say the color is Gorgeous this year, I’ll have to get around to downloading the camera here…all golds and reds.

This was a practice run earlier in the year. The foresters would love to let the fire burn. Like all forests, Connecticut’s are designed for and need it.  But like many forests, there are too many houses and too many years of fire suppression to make that a good idea.

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of a personal nature. It has been a busy year since I took this picture on October 8th, 2015 at just about this time of day:

An awful lot has gone on: canoes rebuilt, tractors being rebuilt, gardens growing (or not growing), finding and loosing people, another year spinning around. A little worn or little lost at times perhaps (like this ring found deep in the woods), but not broken. Fall isn’t about death, it is about that deep breath and the pause that comes before the next chapter.  The world always seems a little clearer in the fall, maybe that is just my quirk. But it is easier to take stock and look forward, even when one is running harder than ever.

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A fascinating article:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161005-beavers-are-back-in-the-uk-and-they-will-reshape-the-land

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A lovely interlude this morning (that feels like about a decade ago): watching almost two dozen blue birds in a set of big old apple trees next to an old field.  They were flying up, down, around, chasing each other madly or perhaps joyously.  It was a beautiful fall day, clear, and here were all these little, living sparks of the blue sky rising from the old gold fields and the lovely lichen blue/grey/green tree. I suppose chasing insects, there being no fruit in the tree, or maybe just enjoying the morning.

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isn’t looking too healthy these days.  Finally got the southern boundary reflagged. It had been awhile. It is frightening to see how fast the ash and hemlock have declined. And how quickly the barberry, burning bush, and bittersweet have moved in. And that barberry? Nothing else grows there: not ferns, not mushrooms, not trees.  I know what I want the land to look like. How to get there? Well, I know the what, but the how?

It is a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of money (and A Lot of Garlon and Glysophate). For the land’s sake, I’d say it is worth it. For my sake, I’d say it is worth it….I just wonder, is there any one out there in the next generation that will care? Will they even miss it? Or will the degraded jungle be the new normal? It has its own beauty, of course it does. But it is a pale reflection of what can be there. And that, of course, is itself a pale reflection of what once was.

Yggdrasil will always be with us, and will always be beautiful. But should we accept the diminished and contorted (after all, that money and that time….) or should we fight and go down in defeat remembering the soaring cathedral of the trees?

Of course….Yggdrasil is best translated as ‘The Gallows Tree’ Which is an Interesting name for the tree associated with both the creation of man and the doomsday.

Random thoughts….

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September go anyway? I know where it went, a series of weeks that lurched from one thing to the next.

The first day of October is appropriately fall like: damp, not quite chilly, early leaves falling and the asters blooming. Very pleasant if you ask me. The vegetable garden is almost done for the year, though I have the most impressive chard, beets, parsley, and some kale.  And some experimental winter squash….we shall see on that.

A few of the hardier house plants are still outside: the scented geraniums, the passion flowers, and the fuchsia. I have no idea what to do with one of the passion flowers.  Its interpretation of eight feet and my interpretation of eight feet….Differ.  I don’t really want to cut the vine off, since it is still blooming away….up there on the second story.  Nice red flowers, very pretty!

Otherwise there are plenty of things to be done, as always!

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There are always those first fall days, when the low storm clouds are chasing across the sky, the earliest trees are turning, and the air has changed. A time for going.

One of the oddest animals around these days are the geese that do not go.  There are many migratory flocks of Canada geese of course.  But there are also the non-migratory.  They cluster, an ingathering of scattered pairs.  But, they do not seem to leave. Or they leave very leisurely. I suppose they eventually get down to the shore along about November. But currently, they occupy any large grassy areas near large bodies of water.  In between the turkeys.  Actually, the turkeys are very svelte compared the geese: lean, woodland creatures that cross the paths of the geese only on the way to the water’s edge to take advantage of any exposed bugs.  The geese simply graze and their behaviour makes a great deal of sense.  A short day’s flight will take them down to the shore when they must leave, but for the moment, why go?  Still, on a cloudy, wind whipped day, it is peculiar to note a large flock happily bedded down with no intention of getting up.

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