Holding winter at bay

I've been considering the on-coming winter a lot lately. The last week or two has been beautiful. Sunny all day and warm (well, except for this weekend, which is about what you expect at this time of year). And it looks like it will continue for a bit.

I am storing all this sun for darker days. In that spirit, I went out this afternoon and took some photos. The sun was setting, the light was nice, and I forgot to increase the pixel size on Hubby's camera. So what you get is a series of lovely pictures that you probably shouldn't enlarge. They're a wee bit pixelated. Apologies for that.

This November light has a quality to it that I think I have never appreciated before. It's been dry this month, unusually so, and the opportunity to appreciate the bare landscape hasn't escaped me, as it usually does. The light is so low in the sky right now that everything appears backlit, almost all the time. How did I never notice this before?

 

Popcorn at the Savoy

It was Friday night and we were in Montpelier to celebrate Hubby's birthday. A 45 minute drive from our house, we do not come here often. But Hubby loves the town and so we braved the soft, wet snow and headed out for a movie and dinner. We arrived early and so spent some time ambling around downtown, shivering in the cold. A fire dancer drew a crowd on the steps of the Lost Nation Theater. An unexpected gallery opening pulled us in for a while for a showing of Vermont artists' imagining of the future of our state. Later, we climbed the steps to the Black Door Bistro and sat in their art deco bar for a pre-movie martini. The bartender stirred my martini- no shaking here- and gave me three olives which immediately made me love her.

At quarter after six, Hubby and I walked less than a block down the street to the Savoy Theater. Opened in 1980, Casablanca was the first film shown on this theater's tiny single screen. They continue to show classics, art house, and independent movies. And that's nice enough, right? There aren't many places in Vermont to see independent films these days, but I'll bet that there's nowhere within driving distance that melts butter on a little two burner stove in a cast iron pot to ladle onto hot popcorn behind a wooden counter. Real cultured butter... did I emphasize that? And not only that, the girl behind the counter filled our popcorn bucket half way then ladled some butter on it, then filled it up the rest of the way and added a second layer of butter. This was inspired, truly. It left us both with greasy fingers and was exactly the thing to tide us over until our post-movie dinner. The shaker of nutritional yeast on the counter only adds to the aging hippie feel of the place and this reminded me of why I love this theater. 

The film, A Serious Man, is the Coen Brothers' most recent movie and it was excellent. Even better than the movie, however, was the man sitting three or four rows in front of us with the laugh that filled the tiny room with huge, rolling guffaws, uncontrollable and impossible not to laugh along with. Helplessly, Hubby and I giggled, snorted, and snickered along with him as the serious man progressed from one tragi-comic event to another. Even later, at dinner, the snickering continued each time we'd think of it.

Sadly, this lovely theater is up for sale now. The customer base for the Savoy is aging- Hubby and I were without question the youngest in the crowd- and apparently competing with Netflix and the host of multi-plexes popping up all over hasn't been easy. Whatever happens to the Savoy in the next couple of years, I very much hope they keep their real-butter popcorn.

Saving daylight

 Colorado springtime light, 2009.

I know that there's exactly the same number of hours in the day today as there was on Saturday. But then why does it feel so much harder to fit everything in? Coming home from work, my drive is now in the dark. Making dinner feels like it takes so much longer now and by the time it's over, it's time to think about going to bed.

 Morning light in the kitchen, 2009.

It really feels like this fall has been the source of too much bad news. The news of a friend's recent diagnosis with Parkinson's disease has shadowed the last week, coinciding sadly with the progressive loss of light and color in the outside world. It has left us wondering how to express our sympathy and how to best be helpful to them in this dark time.

Ralph's photo, perennial blooms back-lit in summer 2009.

A cousin's divorce finalizing the rift in our family likewise casts its shadow. Does all this happen in the spring too? Is there just as much sadness then as there is now? It doesn't seem that way, but I think it might just be easier to deal with sadness when the world is full of light.

Back-lit Colorado blooms, spring 2009.

In the midst of all this, it is very sweet to come home to Ralph making Indian food for dinner. Bright, full of vegetables, spice, and color. It is the perfect meal for a couple whose refrigerator is full of condiments. Plain yogurt, mango pickle, Major Gray's chutney, coconut chutney, garlic pickle. It is our meal of choice when we don't feel like doing anything complicated. We buy jarred curry sauce, saute veggies and chicken, make some rice. It is vibrant and keeps the taste buds awake, despite the dark. It was so spicy tonight that it made my ears hurt. Does anyone else know that feeling?

Ralph's version of the Colorado sky, spring 2009.

So in the spirit of appreciating light, I have reached into the photo archives for scenes from a brighter season. All are mine except where noted.

More of that luminous Colorado light, spring 2009.

For love of beans

I've had a pile of bean pods sitting on the garage floor for weeks now. Ostensibly, they are drying. In reality, I'm not sure they're any more dry than they were when I pulled them off the vines. And as mice have found the apples we temporarily stored in the garage, I decided today is the day to bring in the beans (well, and the apples, too, of course). And I tossed Maizy-the-cat out in the garage to stalk mice. Hopefully our fearsome huntress will come home with her own dinner tonight.

But today is my day off. And so I felt like it was probably okay to get distracted by taking bean photos instead of shucking beans. So this is how I've spent my rainy Friday afternoon. Oh, and drinking a glass of wine too. But I didn't think that was worthy of a photo. 

 What I love about the beans - one of the many things - is how their colors are so muted now. Shades of pale green, gold, some red. It rather fits the season. Most of the leaves have blown off the trees outside my window and those same muted shades now dominate the outdoor landscape too.

Happy Friday.

Apple Days II

  Cluster of apples in Champlain Orchards.

 Glaucous bloom.

11 gallons of newly pressed apple cider
8 pounds of raw honey
3 pounds of Thompson raisins
1 peck of pears
1 cup of mulled cider
and a drizzly, dark, damp Saturday afternoon

yields

3 glass carboys of cider sitting on our kitchen floor, ready to ferment
and pear sauce, coming soon.

Cider siphoned out of the carboy for tasting.

 Dissolving honey in warm cider.

Apple Days

I do apologize- you will get sick of apple photos by the end of this post. I can't help it, they're rich fodder for a girl with a camera. It is now well into fall and edging towards winter in my corner of the world. It is cold in the mornings- nearly always frosty now. The light is not yet here when I wake up and just shy of gone when I get home at the end of the day. It is harder to spend time outside, and hard to feel like the days are long enough for all that needs to be done.

I have been particularly busy with work this fall- lots of changes are on the horizon and transition is never easy for me. And so moments of quiet are especially dear to me. Like this Sunday when hubby and I went on a food pilgrimage, of sorts. There is an orchard a couple hours south of here, Champlain Orchards, that grows more apple varieties than anyone else. There are heirloom varieties, traditional cider varieties, apples that are huge, tiny, striped, speckled, beautiful, knobby, ugly, smooth.

We took our time driving down there- this is hard core Vermont farm country. Addison county, known for its richly productive clay soils and relatively flat fields (which means rolling hills, in this state), is a lovely New England landscape- intensively farmed, rural, pastoral. The landscape is mostly open ag land with forests around the edges. Our corner of Vermont is the opposite. A background of forest interspersed with agriculture. So it felt like we were leaving our territory.

Arriving at the orchard, we picked up a map and headed out into the rows of trees. There wasn't a lot to choose from; its a bit late in the apple season. It was cold, windy, beautiful. This orchard was nearly deserted. Set along a west-facing hill, the Adirondack mountains were clearly visible across the lake. This is what people must think of when they think of Vermont in the fall.

And so we tasted our way through this orchard, landing on snowapple, Cox's orange pippin, and liberty. A peck of apples now in our garage, for eating every day at lunch and on my ride home from work. Unhappily, apples make my stomach hurt sometimes and trying dozens of varieties that day to figure out what we wanted to take home was not exactly the thing to leave me feeling hale and hearty. But I love the idea of them so much that I mostly try to forget about that when I'm eating them and this weekend, especially, I was willing to make the sacrifice in the name of autumn.

So in these days of unsettling change, reduced day length, and cold temperatures, I'm taking color and sweetness where I can. This weekend, it was in an apple orchard in Shoreham, Vermont. I hope you're finding your own sweetness these days.

The end of a season

Mark Breen warned us this weekend: a hard freeze coming on Sunday night, followed by a whole week of cold. It made yesterday feel especially beautiful. Ralph and I spent the day scrambling around the yard, finishing all the things that we meant to get to before things started freezing. We mowed the lawn, picked beans and beets, moved firewood, took down one of the hammocks (which involved some tree climbing by me! and a skinned knee or two). It was sunny and beautiful and decidedly not warm. I wore a woolly hat and made five bean soup for dinner. It was a very, very nice end to the weekend.

And then today, I woke up and everything was covered with sparkly gray frost. And I started remembering what I don't like quite so much about fall. I searched through the mess of gloves, hats, scarves, rain pants and miscellaneous detritus on the top shelf of our hall closet to find a matching pair of gloves. Out came the ice scraper and on went the heat. There is part of me that is not sure I'm much looking forward to winter darkness and cold. It is so dark in the morning now...

I spoke to a friend today who just had a weekend of bad news. The death of an old friend of his, and the impending death of his dog combined with a waterfall of smaller bad events made for a dark Monday for him. There's something about fall that makes sad news feel even sadder. On my drive home today, I called another friend to check in about getting together later this week, and found her crying because she was about to put her dog to sleep.

I've noticed that often people are either animal people or plant people. I have always been in the plant camp, I won't deny it. But I have, without question, experienced the incredible comfort and companionship that animals can provide. A very dark time in my life was made much more bearable by the sweetness of a cat named Stripey who always seemed to know when I was feeling badly. That cat spent many an afternoon curled up with me while I tried to figure out how to makes changes I needed to make in my life. And the thought of losing our kitty, Maizy, is nearly unbearable to me. These animals can provide a calm within most any storm and I do not take that lightly. So my heart is with both of these friends of mine.

Photo credit to Ralph.

 

During these brilliant days of fall, the melancholy side of me can't help but think of an article I read years ago (and I can't remember where- Northern Woodlands?- if you read it, please point me to it for citation). A Vietnamese family immigrated to Vermont, not too many years after the Vietnam war. Their family had been through hell, survived more loss than I can imagine. When autumn started coming on, the father in the family looked upon the dying leaves as the most intolerable loss. The green world that had been a constant to him throughout his life was dying and it sunk this man into a terrible sadness.

The story stayed with me and I think about it when autumn takes on the edge of winter. And it reminds me that this season, much celebrated in my neck of the woods, can also mean the end of things. The last chapter in a season of green before winter slides in and turns the world gray again. It is the other side of the growth and promise of spring, the anticipation and bubbly excitement of new things coming to life. So I have spent the day thinking about sad things and wishing my friends well in bad times. Tomorrow will no doubt be a little better, but today I take a minute to note the end of the season.

Photo credit to Ralph.