the jade blooms

Sometimes, the unexpected happens and you discover a jade plant can flower. There is a Secret Garden kind of store here where I bought a jade with buds. I googled information, and found out the plant would likely flower in December.  A bit early then, for the flowers are coming out.

It’s warm for November here, though the sky is deceptively overcast, like snow soon sky.  The marigolds are still in bloom, and they are not the only ones. Yet it is winter, a season that began on the first of the month.  The sky is a mxture of grey-blue, grey-white, and grey.  I’ve propped open a window and the wind howls this late morning.

Leaving the west means leaving the sun, but thankfully, the health food market stocks Udi’s Granola, Chocolove Seasalt, Rudi’s Spelt Bread, and Justin’s nut butters. The joy in discovering Justin’s all the way out here! If only Conscious Coffee and Sanctuary Chai could make the trip, with Noosa Yogurt tagging along…

The black horse has hunkered down, sitting against the wind perhaps.  Now the leaves have begun to smash against the window.  The stairs creak.

Today the wind blows with such force that pools of water catch waves.  Imagine stink bugs and such surfing.  The Adirondack chairs blew off into the garden.  Up at four am, I heard the boom and saw the immediate darkness as the power went out this morning.  Such darkness and quiet.  All I wanted was coffee, but when I ventured into the kitchen with a flashlight, the stove wouldn’t turn on.  I cracked open a window, then shut it and went back to bed.  A few hours later, I realized all I needed to do was light the gas.  Coffee at seven-thirty was fine, but not as sweet as it might have been earlier.  The power came on soon enough, and I went online and found the photographs in the Times on the snowfall in NY.

The wind still sounds like flute music, unless someone nearby is practicing a wooden flute.  I phoned my parents and let them hear the wind.  Can a sound be bracing?  For a moment, the sun came out, and I thought to walk outside; just as my thought was to turn to action, the sun disappeared.

This is the seaside adjustment, the New England difference from Colorado, where sun is around 300 days of the year.  When I first moved out, I discovered I was exhausted all the time.  I wondered if the dip in oxygen from 5000 feet to sea level affected me in a way that the reverse never did. Now the wind sounds like the sea, and I suspect as I write this, quite a few folks are headed to the beach. I will don my sunscreen and head out as well.

Or heard:

To Autumn, read by Stanley Plumly, from poets.org

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