October 15: Spray of sparrows

Sparrows still linger in the fields and along the roadside. As I was driving today, sparrows scattered on either side of my car, their plumage blending perfectly with the sepias, ochres, and umbers of the weedy verge. They're subtly gathering the season's last fruits, the seeds of withering grasses and wildflowers. How close, this time of year, the convergence of beauty and mortality.  

As my car passes, 

spray of late-season sparrows. 

A friend's mother has died.

October 14: Lost in a book

Spent a good part of this rainy day reading a novel, a murder mystery by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø, one of my favorites. Without giving anything away, I can say it's one of the more devastating books that I've read recently. So it was with some relief that when I finished this tragic book, set in the darker corners of chilly Oslo, the view out the window somewhat eased my mind: maple leaves edged with orange, back lawn a mosaic of colorful leaves across which a fat squirrel carries an acorn, and the river smoothly flowing past.

Hunter's orange leaves
offset the bleakness
of rain-soaked trunks.

October 13: Caterpillar

This morning I went for my first run in at least six months. You could hardly call it a run, given that I moved very slowly for a very short distance. But I wore my new running shoes, the expensive ones my physical therapist encouraged me to buy as incentive to start running again, and I didn't overdo it. It's very hard for me to begin at Square One all over again with an activity I used to be really good at; I don't have a lot of patience for what will probably be months of rebuilding my strength and lung capacity. But forcing myself to take it easy gave me the opportunity to focus on what was going on around me: red squirrel scolding in the woods along the river, robins feeding in a crabapple, a squash garden killed by last night's frost, the perfect cloudlessness of the blue sky on this crisp fall day.

Didn't step on
the caterpillar in the road.
Thought it was a turd.

October 12: Freeze warning

The National Weather Alert for tonight is for temperatures below freezing. It is mid-October, after all, so this is to be expected. But that chilly blast every time someone opens the front door reminds me how, even though I love living in a boreal habitat, with its mountains, spruces, and warblers, I really don't enjoy the cold.

Tonight my husband, whom I haven't seen much of lately, and I are going out to dinner at Primo, probably our favorite restaurant in Maine. My hope is that the calorie intake from tonight's meal--and resulting added fat cells--will compensate for the inverse drop in air temperature. I'm working on my own personal insulation layer.

Today at the feeders a big flurry of birds--chickadees, titmice, house finches--chowed down sunflower seeds as if, aware of the imminent cold snap, they wanted to stuff in as much as they could to help them survive the cold, dark night. Calories can mean life or death when you're a bird.

To eat like a bird
is not always
a dainty thing.

October 11: Hard rain

Last night's storm began with such a loud rumble of thunder that I actually opened the front door in alarm, thinking that maybe a landslide was rolling down the side of Mount Battie. Then I kept the (inside) door open so that the cat and I could both watch, fascinated, the torrential downpour that seemed to instantly fill the streets with rushing rivers of rain. Rain roared on the roof, slackened, then pounded some more, its drama providing a recurring frisson throughout the evening.

Streets washed clean--
catharsis, after
rainstorm's violence.

October 10: Toast

Home alone, making toast for dinner. Sometimes just a little thing will send me back to childhood...

My grandmother used to
cut my buttered toast
into "soldiers."

October 9: Chrysanthemum

Some of the neighborhood maple trees suffer from a blight that leaves black spots all over the leaves--which unfortunately makes them a lot less attractive this time of year when they're falling all over the lawn. One fell atop a pot of chrysanthemums in my front yard, and I was struck by how much this one poor leaf marred the simple beauty of the flowers.

Blight-mottled leaf
hides the chrysanthemum:
censorship.

October 8: Brussels sprouts

Yesterday I experienced the birder's nirvana of spending the day on Monhegan Island after a "fallout," when thousands of birds were crawling all over the island. Palm Warblers were bobbing on lawns and all over Lobster Cove beach, catching sand fleas in the wrack. Black-throated Blue Warblers had invaded Fish Beach. Yellow-rumped warblers were bouncing like popcorn amid the spruce stands. And at one point we stopped to admire a vegetable garden and were delighted to see a Black-throated Green Warbler hopping in the bright green lettuce and a Magnolia Warbler perched in the Brussels sprouts.

Later, a mother and her young son were also observing the garden, although not to watch the birds like we had. I heard the mother explaining to the boy how to find the Brussels sprouts on the thick, leafy stalks. Because, let's face it, Brussels sprouts are weird-looking plants and it's hard to figure out exactly how those mini cabbages actually grow.

Today Beth's Farmstand in Warren boasted a large crop of Brussels sprouts, one of my husband's favorite vegetables.

They'd also posted a lengthy explanation of what to do with this strange foodstuff: 

"When prepared properly they are gourmet."

I'm personally not all that fond of Brussels sprouts to eat (unless someone makes them "gourmet" for me--Pai Men Miyake in Portland offers my favorite). I simply find them fascinating to look at, particularly when migrating warblers are involved.

Brussels sprouts' knobby stalks.

Delicate grace

of a foraging warbler.

October 7: Falling leaves

A gust of wind has shaken loose a tree-full of yellow leaves, now slowly swirling down in a mesmerizing flurry over the backyard. It's as if we were in a giant autumn snow globe, but with leaves instead of snow flakes.

Cat wants to chase them all,
these loosened leaves
outside the window.

October 6: Fog

A vague memory of hearing the foghorn in the night, and when I wake, the sky is white and Mount Battie's draped in mist.

Birch's yellow leaves glow
within the fog.
I wake slowly.

October 5: Nocturnal flight calls

Overhead last night I could hear in the mist and dark the nocturnal flight calls of migrating birds. I could even identify some of them by species: the peeper-like call of the Swainson's thrush, the distinct chip of the white-throated sparrow. Apparently it was like this Wednesday night, too--birds fleeing southward in large, loud waves--and Monhegan Island experienced an epic fallout Thursay morning of hundreds of birds. A friend out there reported 60 Savannah sparrows on his lawn alone! I wasn't there to see it, alas.

Birds call in the dark.
I long to be
wherever they land.

Posted with Blogsy