November: A Love Story

It is the first week of November and it has come in dreary, wet and with a gentle gloom. The maple tree through my kitchen window, which was just a perfect flaming match, is now a reach of black branches. Clouds hang low and heavy and I can hear rain guttering off the roof. I love this time of year. There’s a quiet to the season. And, if you let it be, a pause before the swirl of the winter holidays begin. I write to you with my November playlist on and half-burned stumps of candles on the table. I’m stocked on tea and there’s a stack of ghost stories at the ready.

Last Friday was Halloween, or Samhain, the day perched perfectly between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, —the day where the veil between the worlds is believed to thin. Although it is customary to build-up to this day with ghost stories and macabre decorations, I’ve long felt that it is not until Halloween itself and the dark weeks leading up to the solstice in which ghost stories feel the most potent. It is in these liminal weeks that we see the dying of the world, not in October’s crisp, bright days with food and flowers still heaving the branches and the last crickets singing. 

Perhaps being November-born imbues me with a natural affinity for this time of year. Perhaps, having grown-up in an off-the-grid cottage deep in the forest leaves me with a particular comfort and coziness with the dark. I feel more myself this time of year when everything slows, and there is time to go inward. Creativity seems easier to access as well, as though some deep, vital levels have risen with the water table, and are now coursing just below the surface.

Does November have a fan club? If so, I’ll send my dues. Put a postage stamp on your best fallen leaf and leave it beneath the largest toadstool you can find. Weigh it down with an acorn, candlestub or hardened tootsie roll until the chillest wind carries it North. The next feather that crosses your path, —be it turkey, jay, or flicker, is your membership card. Tuck it in your hat, thred it through the knit of your sweater, affix it to your windowsill with a spent piece of beeswax.

In the Studio

I’ve been eager to get back into the studio lately. I would love to share some work with you that feels pleasantly drear and November-clad but I’m too influenced by the seasons for that so what I have to share is still tinged with the dazzling days of October.

Turkey Vulture (Betty) in collage

I recently finished collaging a piece begun long ago but never completed. Some of you may remember Betty the turkey vulture. She now sits amongst the last California poppies of the season. Perfect timing as turkey vultures are migratory and returning to their southern homes. I just finished this Northern Pygmy Owl collage today. It was inspired by an encounter I had with just such a tiny owl on an ornamental plum tree outside my local post office.

Up in the Plum: Northern Pygmy Owl in collage

In September, I up-cycled another lamp so that C— and I would have “matching” bedside lamps. He chose a fox. I added a branch of huckleberries. I was hoping for a slightly more acidic green on these lampshades and think I may eventually replace them for something a bit more punchy and a bit less 90’s log cabin but they’ll do for now.

I’ve also been working on a proposal for a project I can’t yet share, as well as a possible upcoming opportunity to see my work in person. Mysterious, I know! I’m looking forward to sharing details soon.

The local art store recently began hosting life drawing sessions and though I’ve only had a chance to attend one it felt really good to draw with such intention and amongst peers again. I’m looking forward attending again next week.

House and Garden

Rosehips from our planting strip and the roadside.

My dahlias did bloom, by the way. They are huge and pink and blousy. Not my usual taste but I really love them.

The garden is winding down for the year, of course. I’m enjoying the contrast of the still verdant nasturtiums against the golden grasses and blackened sunflower stalks.

I harvested a number of our hydrangea blooms and made a classic hydrangea wreath.

We had the joy of a late season volunteer pumpkin vine which grew three surprise pumpkins on the roof. They never turned orange but I’ve enjoyed them never-the-less.

I planted spring bulbs before the weather really set in. In spring I’m always happy with my past-self when the bulbs emerge and bloom. With any luck snow drops, tete-a-tete daffodils, and some grocery store fritillaries (a gamble, but perhaps a delight) will enliven our planting strip in a few month’s time. You may still have time to plant some and I highly recommend it.

And we welcomed a new cat into our home. A tortoiseshell beauty named Hazel. She is settling in pretty well, though not without a few mishaps, and is currently curled beside me on a wool blanket.

Elsewhere:

Back in September C— and I harvested apples for a batch of cider, which we pressed and is currently brewing.

I made it up to Vancouver, BC briefly to visit family and spend a little time in the city. I enjoyed playing tourist on Granville Island again. I hadn’t been back to that pocket of the city since I graduated from ECUAD in 2018. I stocked up Lapsang souchong and a chai flavoured with saffron from a tea merchant whose library of canisters are reached by rolling ladder.

We attended a small family wedding on the Oregon coast in October. Candle lanterns and bouquets of dahlias marked the alter on the sand. The bride appeared over the sand dunes with a daughter on each arm. 

Driving home from work last week the river was looking-glass still and the light was just right to see thousands of little fish feeding. I pulled over the car to watch them break the surface into concentric ripples and blip in and out of the river in a quick, mercurial leaps. My guess is that they were baby salmon on their way to the Pacific Ocean. It was a truly magical sight.

We spent a few days at a remote hot springs and it was really wonderful. It was a particularly quiet part of the West and we were often able to enjoy the pools all on our own. One night the wind raged around us, lifting the water into spray as we sat warm in the dark pools.

A friend hosted a natural dye party and we dyed yarn and fabric with dyers polypore myshrooms, indigo and oak gall.

We biked under moody skies through a wetland looking for birds. Snowy egrets lifted from the cattails and cut across the Paynes grey sky.

We harvested chanterelles.

On the eve of Halloween I sewed myself some bat wings to trick-or-treat in style with my nephews. 

I trick-or-treated in style with my little nephews.

The annual meringue-ing of the pie occurred, and was enjoyed by all, —all being C— and myself.

That’s all for now. Quince processing and Frankenstein on the big screen are my weekend plans. November awaits. Tell me your ghost stories and favorite November things if you care to.