Thursday, February 14, 2013

November, 2012



11-7-2012

Not raining this morning. Blue peeks through small rents in the cloud cover. A morning-angled spotlight picks out the threadbare gold tatters still clinging on the big horse chestnut that hulks over my view of the horizon, its massive skeleton now exposed. All around is shadow. A brief vignette, it reminds me of a museum spotlight on gold artifacts found still adorning a ancient king’s buried bones. The clouds drift, closing the portal, snapping off the spotlight.

Out for a walk yesterday, I grieved over the demise of color. Japanese maples that a week ago displayed their dearest dowry of ruby, amber and gold, now stand half disrobed, their filigreed finery fallen about their feet. 

 But just a few blocks away, I found cause to rejoice. Espaliered on a grayed cedar fence, a deep pink Sasanqua Camellia, a winter bloomer, thick with buds, presented its first open flowers of the season! The Camellia’s sturdy evergreen leaves cloak the fence all year. The Camellia reminds me of the sequence of blooming shrubs that will keep me afloat through the dark Seattle winter – camellia, Viburnum bodnantense, witch hazel, sarcococca, and on – like a string of lantern fires guiding a night traveler.

 11-21-2012
As if it were a Titan with massive indigestion, the atmosphere over our region roils, boils, and belches lately. Around 6pm, a sudden, intense roar of wind, like a military jet flying low, shook the kitchen window, made me jump and the cat dart under the sofa. A moment later, barbarian hordes of rain and hail pounded my roof, walls, windows.







  

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