Autumn

As I have grown older time seems to fly past at warp speed. I was checking back over previous entries to this blog and realized it had been 8 months since I started writing about the gardens, cottage, and myself.

The summer of vegetables and flowers has moved into the season of leaves to rake and mulch to put down. My instincts tell me that we will have more snow this year than last. I foresee some cold and blustery days ahead. Days when the wind sings its song of movement; moving the air across the land as time moves toward the next spring. I do not like cold weather. I do know it is a necessary thing. In a gardening sense, some seeds will not sprout if they have not been subjected to the days of winter cold. There could be a lesson for us there.

When we lived a simpler life, closer to the land and nature, winter meant time to rest from farming. It was time to live off the food stored from that farming with the addition of meat from livestock and hunting. Growing up on a farm, I knew it would not be until the first very cold days that the hogs and chickens would be slaughtered and meat processed and stored. The remainder of the time was spent staying warm and doing necessary chores.

Times have changed and we spend all year enjoying the ability to travel. We eat most anything we want (if we can afford it). Heating does not involve the hard work of cutting and gathering in wood for the fire as it once did. We have, in this country at least, a soft lifestyle. The season's passing does not hold the significance it once did.

The first day of autumn slid past last month and from that day until the winter equinox the hours of daylight will grow shorter. Shorter days and the position of the sun signal birds and animals that migrate that it's time to move on. The days grow shorter as the powers of the night take hold.

We are only weeks from Samhain, or Halloween to non-pagan folk. Samhain is our highest Holy day, our Pagan New Year. It is a time when the Veil is thin and spirits walk the Earth, or at least peek across the Veil to see how we are doing. It is the time to honor our dead and especially to remember those who have crossed the Veil in the last year. It is both a solemn and happy time.

The autumn colors are as beautiful as the first green of spring. The snow and ice covered trees have their own special beauty as winter wraps them in her icy garb. Soon the heat of summer will be a faint memory as we rush to get out of the cold. We must always remember that beneath the snow and ice, safe from the cold winds, next year's life awaits the coming of spring.

And the Silver Wheel turns.