eat the sky

Like a living kaleidoscope, my small world of color has gone from predominantly yellow and blue to orange and blue. The cottonwood leaves along the Rio Grande are deep burnt orange, as are the swaths of aspens on the mountaintops. Each warm sun-filled day is more precious than the one that came before it. It won't be long now. We try to own the feeling. My friend puts aspen leaves on her kitchen windowsill. Outside she is drying cosmos and marigold heads for their seeds (and I forgot to take some home with me).

Can any day be more perfect than this one? (yesterday? tomorrow?).
John Nichols wrote a stunning book many years ago called The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn. It is filled with photographs, stories, humor, love for landscape and its species of inhabitants. In it are heart-stopping descriptions of Taos in autumn. Elusive and vivid. Scent of cedar woodsmoke in the air, flocks of birds on wires and trees. I've always remembered one particular line from the book. He wrote that the sky is "so blue you could eat it with a spoon". Today was one of those delicious sky-eating days.

under the orange brolleys
Maggie and I ate a lovely long lunch outside under orange umbrellas and blue sky. She's about to leave for winter in England and we had a lot to catch up on before she is gone. She is also a writer, knitter, photographer, so you can imagine the territory we covered - I don't think we took a breath for two hours.

charlie brown lives!
And then I received this very orange, very dear, phone photo of Dante's visit to a pumpkin patch with his grandmother. In a day or two I'll show off the things I'm making him for his first b-day in a few weeks. But at the moment I'm just nostalgic for the days when I took my kids and grandkids to New England pumpkin farms in Octobers past. And I send my love to the boy who is too young to remember me and who doesn't know yet that there is one more person in his life, far away, who loves him (and is madly knitting stuff for him).

Blue mountains white snow gleam
Through pine bulk and slender needle-sprays;
      little hemlock half in shade,
      ragged rocky skyline,


      single clear flat nuthatch call:
      down from the treetrunks


      up through time.

(excerpt from Old Pond by Gary Snyder)