A Fall Return

My mother would have been 104 yesterday, on August 31st. She was always a fan of my blog, as I suppose a mother would be. (I still miss her 9 years after her passing). I wandered away from Spicebush Log a few times, trying out WordPress and Substack, neither providing the ease of writing and posting as blogger. In her memory and honor, I am returning to my roots here at my original blogging headquarters.

In his eloquent book of essays, A Rural Life, Verlyn Klinkenborg, writes of his compulsion to start a journal of life on his New York farm at the dawn of each New Year. Aldo Leopold, writing about a land ethic and stories from his Wisconsin Farm in A Sand County Almanac, begins his "Sketches Here and There" in January. In Naturally Curious, naturalist Mary Holland begins her month-to-month photographic and descriptive journey of New England natural happenings in March, "for March is the month of 'awakenings,' when the earth begins to thaw and life begins to stir after months of relative inactivity." 

I am restarting my writing here on September 1st, a nod to my mother and to my love of Fall in New England. Especially this year, after a rainy May and June and a hot, dry July and August, the recent string of stunningly beautiful days restores my urge to observe and describe and share my observations of nature and land. 

Yesterday offered an auspicious start. While enjoying a first cup of coffee around 6 AM, a small, 6-point buck with velvet-covered tines and shedding his summer fur appeared in the roadside across from our driveway. An hour or more later, a small doe stood in the same spot. On our walk with Henna at the Piscassic Greenway, we heard the whoosh of wings as a raven flew, otherwise silently, over our heads and farther on we watched a green heron preening atop a snag in the big wetland. Returning from an 18-mile gravel bike ride, we stopped to watch a mixed flock of a dozen ravens and turkey vultures soaring. Back in our yard, a barred owl called from the woods behind.

Onward to Autumn in New England. 

A leaf-footed bud patrols a zinnia stalk on our deck.