You can see it.  Hear it.  Feel it.  Taste it in the air.  It’s Autumn.  It’s October.  It’s the time for pulling the windows down and the covers up.  It’s the time for bedding small plants and tiny creatures under blankets of warm colors of fallen leaves.  A time for shaking out thick socks and long sweaters.  

October is also about harvesting:  from harvest moons and harvest festivals to picking apples and tree nuts, pumpkins and winter squash, sweet potatoes and sweet grapes for wine.  And, for me, October is the time for harvesting books.

October is the time I harvest and gather and glean stacks of books for winter consumption.  I pile them on tables and chairs and on the floor beside my bed.  They’re right there alongside the pinecones and cider and fuzzy slippers.

Mostly, I harvest “comfort books”:  usually the ones with old, yellowing pages, often those that I may have already read a few times before.  These are the books that shield me from modern fears and complications, chaos and harsh words.  (I agree with the Portuguese poet who wrote that “literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”) My comfort books open French doors and leaded-glass windows into imaginary places with kinder lives and softer edges, where the dog never dies. 

But I am also the aunt who always gives books for Christmas.  So I start harvesting my “gift books” in October, too.  I love to uncover books with strange titles and unexpected stories.  I like books about how to do odd things.  How to fold fancy napkins or bake la-dee-da cakes.  How to dance.  I try to find stories that make the reader think new thoughts or understand ancient wisdom or feel other peoples’ feelings.  And there are “read-aloud” books (not just for children).  And there are the histories of places and things.  I love books that are meant to be shared and passed along, sometimes with tiny notes written in faded pencil in the margins.

Part of the joy of harvesting books goes beyond the stories themselves, of course.  It’s the feel of the book in our hands or our laps, the pages against our fingers, the smell of the paper and ink, the feel of the words in our heads and our mouths, even the sound of the words that describe books and their makeup and aging – like gilt and foxing and fore-edges and deckle edges and obverse and quarto and yapped.

It’s been said (by best selling British author, Mark Haddon) that “reading is a conversation”; because all books speak to us, but some books – the best books – listen to us as well.  They hear our questions.  They meet us where we are in our lives.  They reflect us and reinvent us.  They restore us.  Harvesting books means finding the ones that are ripe for the picking right when we reach out to them.  They keep the very best fruits just for us, just when we need them.  They satisfy our hungers and fill our pockets with ideas and experiences and knowledge and journeys to take along with us wherever we go in life.  Perhaps especially in the bleak times of winter.  Perhaps that’s why October is the best month for harvesting them.

More than 300 years ago, a French wild child, who wrote under 178 different names – most notably, “Voltaire” – believed whole heartedly in the value and pure joy of books.  It was he who said:  “Let us read, let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”

I suspect that, by declaring this as our season of harvesting books, we might enjoy the dance with them all the way into the first fruits of spring.

A feisty lone dandelion repeatedly visits me every year through the space between two bricks on my front porch:  top step, far left.  A wild little violet does a similar annual pop-up-and-peek-in at my back door.  In fact, an entire line of wild violets joins hands along a crack in the cement that stretches across my driveway like children skipping to a birthday party.

So I know that nature finds a way – to power through and survive, to connect with us and make us smile in awe, to delight and surprise and encourage us, in even the most unexpected places, under the most improbable circumstances.  And yet, a magnolia tree in my own backyard has just captivated me beyond expectation, as if for the first time.

Hurricane Helene started it all.  She brought down a large, old-growth magnolia tree that had stood guard for decades on the far northeast corner of my property.  The storm left this beautiful giant flailing its roots like a twirly skirt lifted and splayed skyward, scattering other plants and patio bricks like confetti in its wake.  The tree’s head came to rest on the roof of the house.  And so, a crew of men came and cut the magnolia into bits and pieces and carried them all away.  All except for the upturned root stump – which was left as a playhouse for the dogs.  The workers also left a large, separate, severed section of the trunk, lying prone on the ground, next to the dogs’ tree-root hideout.  Disconnected and unattached, this hefty log is about five feet long and two feet across.  Dog Daphne has been enjoying it as an added climbing perch and lookout.  And I simply assumed that, in time, both of these leftovers would cover themselves in moss and ivy and vines and such, and decompose back into the ground, returning to the earth as nature’s nutrients.

What I didn’t expect was the “magic” bit.  It’s been slightly more than a year now, and that one segment of entirely separate decomposing trunk is actually beginning to grow into a tree again.  More specifically, it has mothered at least four new baby trees out of its broken self – with no roots of its own, no existing branches, no external prompting.  (Magic.)

Perhaps it is no small coincidence that a magnolia plant symbolizes perseverance, known by even ancient cultures as elegant endurance.  It’s older than dinosaurs (and outlived them).  It has survived ice ages, volcanoes, catastrophic collisions with space debris, and continental drifts.  It invented a way of pollination for itself that pre-dates bees and butterflies.  It can be eaten by animals and humans alike.  It provides healing for ailments like anxiety and insomnia, arthritis and upset tummies, trouble breathing and troubled skin.  And it thrives all over the globe.  With such a fulsome backstory, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this one act of unexpected current-day resilience. 

But it does remind me of how important it can be right now to sometimes turn our thoughts and avert our souls away from the everyday mangling of humanity and nature that is going on in our current world affairs.  How necessary it can be to look for the magic still happening all around us – there for the seeking, just waiting to be noticed.  Especially that magic that proves the opportunities for perseverance and exemplifies endurance.  After all, it doesn’t require us to care less.  It simply allows us to see more dandelions and to count more wild violets and to open our imaginations to “be more magnolia.”  A reminder to celebrate the possibilities  – with renewed wonder and revived hope, a rebirth of gratitude.  Not unlike the wisdom and magic of my old, regrowing, magnolia tree.

Her voice was soft and low and thick with all the charm of a South Carolina accent as she whispered the words in my ear:  “It just doesn’t pay to act ugly in Aiken.”  And I was glad it was being said to me and not about me.  

It was back within the first few months after I had moved to Aiken – more than 20 years ago now.  Back when Aiken was more small town culture and close-knit living.  Back when its manners were carefully groomed and dutifully passed from one generation to the next and kept its feet wiped on every front door mat.

“Not acting ugly in Aiken” meant not honking our car horns – except to say “hey” as we drove past a friend; it meant not raising our voices in anger – except maybe during a football game.  It meant holding open doors and giving up places in line, and asking after the welfare of “your mama and them” at home, and saying ma’am and sir regardless of age or social standing.

“It just doesn’t pay to act ugly in Aiken” also meant that if you did so, it was surely going to come back to haunt you at some point in time, and you would get your comeuppance in some form or manner – most likely sitting next to you in church or wherever you got your hair cut or perhaps in the checkout line at the grocery store.

This particular whispered observation that day had to do with a misstep that had been made by some folks in a rather prominent relationship, and it had all come out in public in a particularly “ugly” way.  And my confidante was pointing out the folly of it all in this most colorful expression – perhaps meant to be a cautionary tale to newly transplanted northerners.  I believed her.

But I wish I had remembered those wise words just a few weeks ago.  I had perceived myself to be kinder than that.  I thought I had incorporated the best of southern good manners into my own daily practices and precepts.  I didn’t think of myself or my behavior as being “ugly.”  Until it was. more “It just doesn’t pay to act ugly.” …

Young dog Daphne was nosing around the base of a large old maple tree.  She pressed her muzzle snugly to the ground and took something into her mouth.  It crunched.  She kept crunching and swallowing as fast as she could, as she watched me scurry over to her, impotently telling her to “drop it, drop it” (knowing full well she was not going to drop it; she was, after all, being young Daphne, doing young Daphne things).  

I had missed seeing what it was that was now well inside her tummy.  But then a thin, transparent wing floated down from the edge of her lips.  A cicada wing.  It could have been worse.  But I scolded her a bit all the same.  Perhaps for disobeying me.  Perhaps for the act itself – eating a fellow living being, a harmless beauty.  Or perhaps it was for taking away one of the singular signs of summer just as it is closing up for the season.
more “The blessings and balance of August.” …

I heard her before I saw her.  It was a slow, rhythmic, metallic, squeak coming up behind me.  I was stumping along with my cane last Sunday morning (same old nagging hip and knee), making my way from a street parking space to my church door.  It wasn’t far, but I’m slow.

The squeak got closer, so I thumped over to the side of the walkway, and she pulled up beside me.

The squeak was a wonky wheel on a shopping cart that had obviously seen better days.  It was being pushed along by a rather tall, perhaps middle-aged, woman – who had probably enjoyed better days herself.

After we had exchanged greetings and observations about the weather (hot and a bit more humid, we agreed), and after her obligatory request about what spare change I might have taking up space in my pockets or lying loose in my purse, and after I had found some and had pressed it into her hand as discreetly as I could, I noticed what was piled into the basket of her cart.  Plants.  A bunch of them.  All dead or dying or looking just pitiful.   more “Shopping carts, dead plants, and Good Samaritans.” …

The babies fittingly broke through their shells on Mother’s Day morning.  At least that’s when I first heard the tiny cheeps that sounded terribly new and fresh, the first day I also noticed the parent birds making regular food runs.

The nest is tucked up in a far corner of my “veranda” (a converted carport), a good 15 feet from the ground, so I won’t be peeking inside it as ladders are still out of the question for me and my gimpy leg.  But I can hear them asserting their presence, practicing their voices.  And I’ve started to catch glimpses of tiny round heads breaching the edge of the nest.  And I talk softly to the parents as they swoop past, or as they sometimes stop to perch hesitantly on the back of a chair to get a closer look at me and judge my character. more “Listen for the safety of birdsong.” …

One was on the far left.  One was equally far right.  One was on the fence, while one went into the house.  Happily, they have nothing to do with politics.  They were trees.  Sadly, they both fell – toes up and roots waving – during the tornado winds of Helene last September.

The magnolia tree on the far right (northeast corner) of my property was the one that came down on the roof of my house.  Actually, rather gently, very southern-lady-like, she only poked a few holes through the shingles – not enough to even allow the rain to come in.  In fact, less damage was done in her graceful fall than during her subsequent removal – which ripped and tore and scraped down all manner of bushes and plants and fencing along the entire east side of my house and property.  And still, left behind was a good long length of her trunk and massive roots, upended and heavy on the ground, her skirts lifted and splayed as if she were a naughty can-can dancer flashing her knickers at her onetime neighbor, the tiny guest cottage behind her, surrounding herself with root-strewn bricks like red confetti.

A similar scenario played out on the far left (northwest corner) of my property with a large lovely flowering tree that I had never been able to really identify.  She, however, was tossed about in different directions and took out fences to both the west and north – plus one neighbor’s storage shed and another neighbor’s palm tree.  She was very undecided and awkward about it all, rather like someone arriving late to the theater and stumbling down a row of established audience members trying to find her own resting place.  Like the magnolia, her ultimate removal also resulted in a similar aftermath, with a tangle of upturned roots at the end of a heavy fallen trunk, torn from the ground, her skirts flying – all quite sassy yet terribly sad.

But what seemed like tragic left-behinds to me, apparently appeared as compelling new opportunities to the dogs – short dog Daphne in particular.  

While I was searching for someone who had the wherewithal to come and remove the excruciatingly heavy and cumbersome trunks and unruly root systems, the dogs were busy evaluating and excavating.  Beneath both tree remains of root drapes and soft dirt, they had found and expanded upon the most exquisite dens … the most delightful hideouts … a unique twist on the tradition of “tree houses.”  

The passage of time over the winter months and the coming spring has also allowed for bright strands of ivy and soft moss and tiny flowers to creep across and around the massive trunks and decorate the doggy playhouses as if they were deep in a woods.  This also gives the dogs great footing for climbing and cushy beds for standing on like giant wild wolves of self-image.  Now, they can crouch in shadow secrecy at the sides of the trunks, or lie in coolness and be protected from rain and wind and all manner of scary things within the root-hole dens, as well as stand tall and majestic, peeking over fences from the top sides of the trunks themselves.

Of course, now the tree remains can not be removed.  Of course, now they’ve even been incorporated into an odd sort of new landscape.  They’ve actually become the basic elements around which I’ve been trimming and reshaping.  The nice man doing the removal of all the rest of the dead and dying bushes and fences and vines and ground cover has been graciously a part of the whole scheme.  He cautiously cuts around and respects the doggy playhouses as he works, while dogs Daphne and Liam watch like concerned project managers.

I suspect there could not have been a more pointed or poignant life lesson taking place in my own backyard these past few months.  Perhaps I will try to look at other crushing blows and frightening changes with an eye for new possibilities.  Perhaps, too, I’ll learn the importance of never missing an opportunity to play.  Perhaps I will forever see downed trees as dog forts.

I’ve been painting again.  Not beautiful landscapes and inspired portraits of Aiken in Spring.  Unlike so many of my talented friends, I have absolutely no ability for that kind of artistic expression.  I’ve been painting rooms.  To be truthful, a delightful handyman named Paul has been painting them for me – what with my still-gimpy leg and better discretion about not climbing ladders.

The rooms are in my guest cottage.  A small bit of a place not more than a few yards behind my house, tucked into the far northeast corner of the property.  For years it was lived in and loved by a dear family friend.  But then it was time for her to move on.  And just as I was beginning to rethink the cottage’s purpose and possibilities, and refresh its walls and floors and furnishings, the dogs and I collided and I got badly broken.  And so I just turned the key on the little cottage door, and turned away.  It stood alone for almost a year.  

But now, I’ve very slowly gone back to poking around in it again.  I decided to start where I had left off – with painting.  And for weeks it had splotches of test colors dotting the kitchen cabinets, bedroom walls, bathroom backdrops and closets, even the floors.  Only the main living area walls escaped the color experiments.  Because only the main living area still sports its original 1950s-era wood panelling on all four walls.  In there, it’s all warm and glowing and retro-cozy, as if it were still listening to 45s on the hi-fi.  But there are cabinets at the kitchen end of the area, and they got painted first – a soft grey-green color – part library, part garden.  Very cottage-y.

I liked the color result so much I thought I’d try a version of it in the bedroom and bathroom as well.  I tried other colors, too – mixtures, blends, varying hues.  And, after weeks of wavering uncertainty, I told Paul, “just go for it” – using a version of the same color as on the kitchen cabinets in both rooms – with a very soft white on both ceilings. 

It rather breaks my DIY heart to have someone else get all up close and personal with my little cottage.  There is something about painting the rooms of a house that lets you truly claim it for your own.  Like putting a big sloppy kiss on its forehead, leaving lipstick marks behind.  So I didn’t watch.  I just kept checking in.

I trust handyman Paul completely.  He is a wonderful painter.  But when I saw the mostly finished walls in both rooms, I actually questioned the paint he had used.  (When you stand in the middle of the house, you can literally see into its three rooms at once.)  And we both started checking the paint cans again.  The colors on the walls looked not just different, they looked as if they weren’t even in the same color family.  They weren’t just variations on a theme, they were whistling entirely different tunes.  One room to the next, cabinets vs. walls, south vs. north, the colors looked like everything from green to grey to almost shadow blue.  Even the ceilings weren’t the same color as they were in the single can – one ceiling looked a grayish-white, one almost pure yellow (in the can, it was cream).  

I know what light can do to the appearance of paint colors, but this was beyond anything I’d seen before.  And it was indeed all about the light.  One room is filled with morning sun, while the other has only artificial light within it.  One is all corners and cubbyholes, the other is long and narrow and open one end to the next.

I suspect that much of life is like that, after all.  Part of it is twists and turns and corners, while other parts are long views.  And how we perceive it is all about the light.  Whether it’s a single color or a single event or a single situation, the light that we shine on it can make all the difference – the natural light we allow in, or the light we bring to it ourselves – as well as the darkness in which we may choose to keep it.  Even where we are standing as we look at it gives us a different perspective, a different perception, a different color.

I love my little time-worn, freshly kissed cottage, now wearing its new coat of many colors.  I suspect it’s because nothing is quite the same in every place and every time I look at it – one wall to the next, one room to the next, one hour to the next.  It’s about the joy of variations and shifting moods and interesting personalities and changing clothes and hats – and the almost infinite diversity and possibilities of it all.  

I can’t wait to paint the floors. 

“Whenever I look down at my hands, I see my grandmother’s rings.”  It was one of those random bits of overheard conversation among strangers that caught me off guard and played with my imagination.  I didn’t know the woman who said it.  I didn’t really see her.  I just heard the words with the edge of my mind as we passed.

I wondered if she wore her grandmother’s jewelry.  Or perhaps her own hands reminded her of her grandmother’s and she saw the rings in her mind’s eye from childhood memories.

I was never very fond of my own hands.  Too pudgy, short-fingered, sun-freckled, with nails that are never fashionable (just sort of places where the fingers suddenly stop).  Until one day, my sister said my hands reminded her of our mother’s hands – and I began to see them that way, too.  And I was glad for all their stubbiness, the plain-speaking appearance of them, their homeliness with a suggestion of strength.

On a recent PBS special, a woman forensic specialist was describing to the show’s host how the backs of our hands are as distinctive as our fingerprints.  In particular, she was observing the sun spots, the crisscrossing of veins, the minute scars and worn patches on them.  I found it particularly compelling that our “age spots” are one of the most significant ways our hands are unique – as if we don’t come into the fullness of our individuality until we are old enough to handle it.  The woman described how an entire branch of study was being developed that was devoted to this way of identifying us as individuals.  Because no two hands are ever alike.  Never.

Beyond just our fingerprints, the backs of our hands are apparently a proprietary blend of inheritance from birth and experience through life, genetics and life choices (our fingerprints are formed while we’re still in the womb, but all the rest has to come later).  Our hands are forever recording who we are and where we’ve been, what we’ve done and how we’ve done it.

Musicians and bread-bakers, nurses and artists, horse riders and race car drivers, athletes, dog trainers, bricklayers, tillers of the ground – all of us have hands that are shaped and informed by our talents and livelihoods.

Perhaps this humanity of our hands is why we instinctively hold each other by them at first breath and last.  Why we use them when we say hello and goodbye, crossing streets, giving comfort, expressing love.  We know each other in dark places by our hands and touch.  We pull each other to safety with them.  Perhaps that was one of the parts of being human we inherently missed most during the long separation of the pandemic – that hand-to-hand connection.  

I suspect there is no parent on earth who does not know their own child’s tiny handprints, brought home from school on a rumpled piece of colored paper; sometimes commemorated in cement near the backdoor.  Even our animals know us by just the scent and feel of our hands.

Apparently our hands are as unique to each of us as a zebra’s stripes and a leopard’s spots.  And only a few other creatures have such distinctions.  The individuality of our hands is the key to unlocking things like laptops and car doors and hidden rooms.  And for hundreds and hundreds of years before us, that individuality was used for sealing documents and signing contracts; with just the marks of our thumbs we kept secrets and promises to each other.  

And yet, I suspect with all the amazingly unique physical character of our hands themselves, the design of them doesn’t matter nearly so much as the awesome responsibility they hold within them – how we take care of one another with them, how we bless or curse the earth with them, what we choose to lift up or hold down with them, how open or closed they are when we share our stuff, how they record the past and shape the future.

Leonardo daVinci told us:  “When you put your hand into a flowing stream, you touch the last of what has gone before and the first of what is still to come.”

I suspect that when we consider the uniqueness of our own hands we are meant to always feel the touch of a child, and see our grandmother’s rings.