Reflecting on the Full Harvest Moon

Fires are beginning to be needed, now and again, as the colder weather slowly 

creeps over the land. Its a funny time of year, this transition. One day it is cold 

and raw, air scented with woodsmoke as I walk out in the early morning, the next 

it is warm and slightly humid, dragonflies flitting about. The forest is still full 

of late summer crickets, and squirrels and chipmunks busy with foraging. The oak 

trees are dropping acorns that ping off the metal roof as loud as gunfire. With 

the first few weeks of teaching and winter preparation, the most I've managed in 

the studio is a few more teeny tiny paintings. 

I enjoy these small, dreamy forest paintings. I like taking time with them, creating 
tiny worlds that invite me deep inside to explore their mysterious realms. Two are
framed and sitting by my dining room table offering me somewhere to travel as 
I eat my meals. 

Outside, I wander close to the house, looking at the layers of green 

textures and finding great joy in the small moments of beauty here. 

Its the time of black-eyed susans, and fall-blooming asters and perennial 

sunflowers and obedient plant practically obscuring the old studio.  

There is still plenty of magic to be found if I bend down and look inside things,
and the dragonflies and phoebes continue to patrol the garden looking for prey. 

Some flowers have gone to seed, 

while others are still offering up their pollen. 

Crumbling, dried flowers begin to top the stalks, and 

hopeful seeds fly away on the wind. Hints of the last 

blast of color are beginning to show - I mourn the flowers, 

and celebrate the decay, too. 

Autumn work is upon me, this pile is almost stacked in the shed, but another 

one was just delivered. This Equinox weekend will find me working outside 

with the squirrels, stacking my winter heat away. 

And today I'm reflecting on a life - today would have been 

my mother's 77th birthday. In a month, a day before my 

fiftieth birthday, it will be a year since her death. 

After I post this, I will go the moss garden, and sit 

with the full harvest moon 

and maybe hum a bit 

- close the earth -  

where my mother's ashes 

have become 

the land.