Out of Time

I suppose it’s the usual, this dropping the thread and vanishing from blog life for weeks…okay, months…at a time. Usual for me, anyway.

It isn’t that I don’t think about posts, or topics for them. I do. Regularly, in fact. But I lack whatever instinct it is that compels the killing pounce, that impulse to not only take the idea down as soon as it’s spotted but tear into it, spill its vital little organs across a page in bloody black and white.

I have, it seems, embraced an identity as a ssllllooooowwww writer rather too enthusiastically—or at least more wholeheartedly than is suitable for the fast-paced world of on-line “content,” designed to appear quickly and fade away at the pace of a gentle scroll. I flatter myself, perhaps, that what I’m aiming for falls into the genre of brief essay rather than drive-by clickbait, but even so. Ideas that fly up like a bright flare fade by the time I’ve arrived ready to catch them with full attention. By then, I see their time-sensitive attributes, and inevitably it seems their time has passed.

So it’s gone for months now.

Without an early killing frost, the garden had a nice run last fall. I took to photographing each harvest, anticipating it might be the last. But the weather stayed fine and the pictures accumulated. Which basket of goods to feature?

 

The garden did eventually freeze, rendering that idea old news. But I left the carrots in the ground as long as I dared. Such pretty carrots in 2021.

The sun then set on that idea, too, but by then the fall saffron crocus were blooming. I am a sucker for that lavender color. And such delicate flowers at the season’s end, after everything else has faded to brown.

And so ephemeral, gone so fast.

 

But I had pulled up the tomato plants before they froze, hanging them upside-down in the greenhouse so the immature fruits could slowly ripen despite their small size. They did, and I harvested fresh tomatoes right through to Thanksgiving.

We ate them all, happily, and by then it was December. Shouldn’t I be contemplating the season of cold and rest, not yapping on about garden produce, still? Then again, it’s been so dry and warm, droughty, and I am weary of ominous news and incessant downers.

Although the too-mild weather was good for getting outside.

Visiting with Jake, who only wanted to steal Doug’s hat.

Then it snowed—not much, but some—and the temperatures slumped to a suitably January chill: the reassurance of a season still beholden to ancient rhythms as we ride the old earth, teetering as we swing around the sun. The moon overhead, meanwhile, kept its own time, waning to dark, waxing full, rolling into a new year.

I tally anniversaries—twenty years since we moved here to Cap Rock, thirty since Doug’s life wrapped itself around mine. I cannot decide if I am time-sensitive or out of time, perpetually late or finally present. Is it joy or helplessness I feel, whirling through the sunrises and sunsets of each new day?