First Frost, November 12, 2016

look at her wings!!!! Embiggen it by clicking. And look at her wings.

I made this video upon walking out this morning and realizing that the Really Big Show was over. I've been waking up the last few weeks around 5:30, while it's still pitch black, my mind running around like a hamster in a too-small cage, going over and over things, sniffing away at the same old stuff as if some of it might have changed while I was asleep. I count how many times the furnace kicks on, and know it's near freezing outside. I test the air and reach over to feel for Chet Baker and cover him up again (he kicks the kivers off).

As soon as it got light this morning, November 12, I padded out in my ugly but plantar fasciitis friendly Crocs and plushy new sea-blue robe. The frigid air went right up my jammie legs and I could smell that odor of plants cut down in their prime, the one that reminds me of the day my greenhouse froze solid. November 24, 2013, sometime around 2 AM, and that reminds me I'd better bleed the drip valve on the gasline again. Oh man. I don't think I'd survive another greenhouse freeze, not this fall. Nuh-uh. That greenhouse is Necessary. Indispensible and that is Non-Negotiable.

Morning glories go purple and pink when they've been cold all night. Zow!

  I'm glad I had the foresight this morning to set the phone to Video, because it really was remarkable out there, a changed world. Late in coming--it's November 12! My fear that the morning glories would only just be getting going by the time frost came were for naught. We had almost a month of glorious autumn weather with all the flowers going HAM as my son likes to say. It was incredible, splendid, glorious, and I did not waste a day of it; I rolled around in it and took thousands of photos and was thankful for every heaven-blue saucer those vines threw out.

And now it was over. OVER with a big frosty bullet, Zappo! Pow! And that was OK. This is how it is supposed to go. I was ready. I never get my fill of flowers, but I'd come close. I wasn't happy about the freeze, but I wasn't devastated the way I am when it hits in the first couple weeks of October and robs me of weeks of potential floral glory.

I never really knew when peak bloom was, until the morning of November 7. And then I knew. My GOD.

I like this video because it's so simple: a curious primate moving through her environment, touching, smelling, feeling, wondering, noting the changes, the things that are odd, the things that are different, and those that are beautiful and comforting too.

When the morning glories have been dead for awhile and I'm really missing their hues, I may put together a post or two of my best flower photos from this summer and fall. Really, what a gift, from five little black seeds. There is such power in a seed, and there's tremendous power in rotted cow manure, too. And there's power in close observation and checking in every few hours to see what's changed.  Checking and re-checking. The hamster, darting, running on its little wheel. Maybe that's why I have such a fierce love for things that change. Young things, growing things. Baby birds and fast-twining vines, that long tall blonde boy and that lissome red-haired girl.  These things free the spirit.

Welcome to my utterly changed world: