One Sentence A Day

November's daily observations

Something as simple as writing a single sentence demands I be present, even if just for a few moments, to reflect.

Beauty comes in the morning light off of a spruce tree.

One Sentence A Day - November

1. November skies begin with clouds ununited and fragmented, jostling for dominance in the waves of darkness.

2. Instead of turning the clocks back an hour when we go to bed, Boone turns them back at midday so I have another hour of getting stuff done.

3. Sitting in the doorway of the barn, I watch black-capped chickadees hang upside down on the leaning mammoth sunflower to extract black and white seeds for lunch.

4. What I thought might be a mist of rain trying to freeze was instead a mizzle of rain being fine and dainty.

5. I might not have seen the hunting blind perched in the pine, reachable by a nine-rung ladder, because the summer foliage is too robust to look far into the trail edges.

6. Rule 1 – turn off all devices.

7. When the pond of the wildlife refuge is still, it is hard to know what is real and what is reflection when laying on my back or belly.

8. At the end of the harvest season, the compost bin was overfull with green garden leftovers but today I lifted out shovelfuls of black crumbly soil.

9. Wind bites even in the promise of light.

10. Sketched in the green is the brown footprints, the result my of walking on the frost covered grass from front step to the chicken coop early this morning.

11. Daisy, one of our Pekin ducks, looks like she rolled in dirt which if you know Pekin ducks know she didn’t.

12. In the darkness of the cedar forest I rest on a mossy log and watch the black waters hardly move while a bird I do not recognize chortles above.

13. “She cared for him without hope, because she had passed the place of turning back or looking back.” (p 13 of Wendell Berry, The Wild Birds, “Thicker Than Liquor”)

Vibrant color of a Pitcher Plant.

14. Soon winter with its implications of death and sorrow will arrive, yet the vibrant red of turtle socks (aka pitcher plant) with its veiny lines and small hairs is proof that winter can also be creation and delight.

15. The rawness of the day’s wind turns my cheeks pink.

16. Despite the trend to avoid nature, it amazes me how people flock to the purchase of trinkets with cardinals, pine branches, and painted snowmen.

17. The spruce and fir tree mini farm in the upper field has grown so tall that there is only one fir tree I can decorate with lights and balls to acknowledge the long winter nights to come.

18. Is it possible the tart cherry tree is curious as to why she still has green leaves when the trees around her are leafless?

19. With a rope, painter’s tape, tape measure, and permanent marker I measure the three largest maples on our property at four feet – diameters 30.2, 31.2, and 33.7.

20. Daylight sneaks between the gaps of the roots from a blowdown cedar whose roots wrap around themselves almost as if they want to be close to one another.

21. Oakley is puking up bunny bits with pink leftovers, the dark raw undigested meat that smells so bad I puked too.

22. “In a world where almost every waterway, every lake, pond, wetland, creek, brook, stream, river, and run has been altered and manipulated by and for people, perhaps there is no such thing as a “river” anymore.” (p 123 of Jim O’Donnell, Fountain Creek)

23. “Falling,” the snowflakes call out to one another as they tumble through the sky and float on shifting winds to land and accumulate on top of one another.

24. I believe only an asshole can poach a doe then bring her ribcage cavity back wrapped in a too small trash bag to where she was killed, just on the other side of my fence, a boundary I have spent over a year training the doggos not to cross but today cannot expect blood-soaked leftovers to be anything but enticing.

25. The first snowperson of the season is not very tall but his carrot nose, tomato eyes and raisin smile offers hope.

26. At the tip of the flat fir needles, snowflakes with their unique individual designs grow heavy and the branch leans towards the ground.

27. The sky acts in defiance of itself unsure if it wants to be gray and thick with clouds or a breathtaking blue hedged by white fluffs.

28. In the tradition of the holiday, I play Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant loud, but only once.

Morning light on Mud Pond after a night of snowfall.

29. If it is a good winter snow season, I am unlikely to complain until February, maybe early March, but if it is a mostly snow-free season, I will complain every day through April.

30. With a Pulaski in hand, I walk the Brook Trail and with two hits pop out the stob guaranteed to trip me up when I walk in snowshoes.