Snowflakes in the Rain...

color in the trees
gray clouds roll across the sky
snowflakes in the rain

~ a haiku, by Aisling, 10/10/20

It is a cold rainy day on my northern hilltop. There are snowflakes in the rain. While stocking up on canned goods for my pantry at a local market, I tucked two boxes of spring-flowering bulbs into my cart. Where my tall cosmos are currently bowing down to the wind and rain, still in brilliant colorful bloom, I will have wild pink tulips and “butterfly” daffodils in the spring.

I also tucked in the ingredients for mulled cider, an autumn essential in our home. The only season missing in my cart was summer… Autumn was there in the cider, winter in the canned goods for cooking in a season without fresh garden bounty, and spring in the humble brown bulbs. Let’s call my produce a little reminder of summer…. salad greens and baby spinach, damson plums, a lemon and a two sweet oranges.

As I write this, I am sitting in the coffee house where my oldest daughter is employed. I’m sipping a delicious dark chocolate, soy café au lait, and watching the wind toss the corn stalks tied to the lamp posts on Main Street in the village. I have three exams to study for, and have materials with me to do so, but my mind keeps turning to other things. It is autumn after all and turning is the story of the season… Leaves turn to amber, gold, and crimson… Families turn up the thermostat, or throw a log on the fire… We turn our lives inward, to home and hearth and tradition, as the rain turns to snow.

photos by my daughter Haiku, 10/10/2009