November Comes Calling

My husband often points out that every season in Vermont offers its own pleasures and beauties. Granted, there's not much that's beautiful in cut-back gardens like the one pictured here EXCEPT that their status ushers in the season of "no weeding."

The no-weeding season is closely followed on my list of seasonal joys by the season of "no bugs." And then there's the season of "long nights for quilting and crocheting and anything else I take a mind to do on the creative front."

In other words, next spring I will strain to catch the first glimpse of green rising from the earth, eager to enjoy the coming of warm weather. And next fall, I will look forward with equal enthusiasm to cutting back the gardens after months of sowing, weeding, watering and harvesting.

Up here, November is renowned for its eternal grayness and gloomy skies. Throughout October, we've had a lot of can't-complain weather with enough sun for us locals to have the pleasure of enjoying our foliage in all its stages from the glory that gets associated with large swaths of color on the hills (the kind that makes the tourists oooh and aaah) to the yellow-to-copper changes in the beech leaves to the russet reds of the oaks and the pumpkin shading on the tamarack trees.

But this week's weather forecast is one of cold, rainy, cloudy days. Today as Jay and I walked down on the land to rearrange the coverings on one of our woodpiles for the winter, the air felt icy on my cheeks. The sky is sodden and gray. November has come calling—just in time.