A Brief Sunrise On A Partly Cloudy Sunday

7:25

Up at 7:00 ( I know, who cares), to a streak of pink just above the hills to the east, a I wait for the sun to rise above it.  Finally it appears, flashing the day, about 7:30, twenty minutes after the supposedly sunrise in this area.  It briefly lights up the lake, then hides again behind the clouds and I am too late to get a picture of it rising upwards into the clouds.  No fog this morning, the first time in five days, and it's still a chilly 48º.  Another stellar day forecast; what have we done right to have such an exceptional week of weather.  And what lays in wait if you believe like the Greeks that everything levels out, the good and bad.  Get out the snow shovels.

My morning started with this 'ordinary poem' from The Writer's Almanac, and I liked it enough to include it below: Enjoy.

Ordinary Life

by Barbara Crooker

This was a day when nothing happened,
the children went off to school
without a murmur, remembering
their books, lunches, gloves.
All morning, the baby and I built block stacks
in the squares of light on the floor.
And lunch blended into naptime,
I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,
one of those jobs that never gets done,
then sat in a circle of sunlight
and drank ginger tea,
watched the birds at the feeder
jostle over lunch's little scraps.
A pheasant strutted from the hedgerow,
preened and flashed his jeweled head.
Now a chicken roasts in the pan,
and the children return,
the murmur of their stories dappling the air.
I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb.
We listen together for your wheels on the drive.
Grace before bread.
And at the table, actual conversation,
no bickering or pokes.
And then, the drift into homework.
The baby goes to his cars, drives them
along the sofa's ridges and hills.
Leaning by the counter, we steal a long slow kiss,
tasting of coffee and cream.
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.

Yesterday was another grand fall day.  We decided to limit our driving, so we drove over to the entrance to Long Point Park, at the end of Lakeside Road.  We hiked through the park, to Sunset Bay, around the Sunset Bay neighborhood, back to the park, out to the tip of Long Point and back to our parked car, through the arcade of Black Walnut trees, my favorite part of the walk.  The walk was just over four miles, took us about two hours, a great way to start a Saturday.  Surprisingly, we saw only one couple on our walk, with two huge Newfoundland's.

Trail At Long Point Park

A Typical Cottage From The 1960's

We returned up to enjoy the afternoon, mostly outside, doing odd jobs in the yard and garage.  We planted some Jerusalem artichokes, late summer bloomers,  for next year, tore out the huge flowerless Jack in the Beanstalk like stems that had been growing by our back porch, hoping to plant them some where else this morning.  Evie was busy potting some of the geraniums left by our neighbors, cut the Leonard's lawn, getting it ready for the dock removal, and I worked on putting away some of the summer toys in the garage attic, cleaning it out as well, throwing away items that have been sitting up there for twenty years.  Why is it so hard to throw away something that is really useless?

Changing Colors Towards Long Point

"Alcohol is a wonderful thing."  Quoting My Grandfather Camplejohn

We had everything done by 5:30 and adjourned to our living room, turned on Garrison Keillor, and treated ourselves to a couple of Manhattans, our favorite drink though we rarely have them these days, preferring a glass of wine or a beer.  We had a easy but good dinner of the leftover Turkish kofte's, with tomato sauce, on toasted pita bread, and we were happy.  Evie had started up our subscription to the Showtime channel so we could watch the first episode of Homeland tonight and we found out we could also watch the past season of Nurse Jackie, so we watched three episodes, keeping up with her life, as she recovers from an addiction to pain killers.  And it looks like she may have a new love interest.  Surprise.  I commented to Evie that it was the first time I remember seeing Jackie really smile  in five years of episodes.  Ah romance.