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Allow the Seasons

"To everything, turn, turn, turn,
there is a season, turn, turn, turn,
and a time for every purpose under heaven."
~ lyrics from The Byrds (their adaptation in song of Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Last night was the first frost of the season. It marks the official end of the growing season here in Indiana.

Luckily, we put on our coats and gloves last night and brought in the last of the tomatoes and peppers. I also brought in a large basket of herbs for drying: thyme, sage, oregano, basil, tarragon, marjoram, and stevia.

I really did not want the summer to end. Even more, I did not want to say goodbye to the days of growing things in the garden. I especially do not want the days to grow shorter and the air to gradually turn from chilly to bitter cold.

Yet there is purpose in these changes, and a rhythm that somehow seems to find it's natural place, at least once I stop fighting it. Today, the house was kept warm from the oven while it dried the herbs. Tomorrow, and for many days, even months, afterwards, we will enjoy the harvest of our garden. I'll slowly shift to being glad for the cold weather that allows me to bake dinners and desserts in the oven and make hot stews, soups, roasts, and slow-cooked meals - all the things that are set aside in the sticky heat of summer.

The leaves will turn from green to yellow, orange, and red, and I'll be grateful for the beautiful, scenic drive from home to office.

With the shorter daylight hours, I'll probably start up a sewing or writing project, or maybe even pick up my paintbrushes and transform a plain white canvas to something that holds secrets and movement in its layer of colors.

On the really cold days, I'll ask my husband to start the fireplace and I'll sit close to him and smile and tell him how warm he feels against me.

Some silent winter mornings, I'll watch the snow out the window and be mesmerized with the dance of the snowflakes against the bare fields. I'll see how the ground sparkles like diamonds and crystals and think that I have never seen anything so beautiful.

I'll also be a little afraid and even angry at the winter, when the roads turn to ice and make driving an adventure and sometimes an impossibility.

What else? Who knows? So many changes.

I do hope to move to a warmer climate someday. When I do, I'll probably sit in the sunshine and think about the snowy Indiana winters. Maybe I'll miss them.

In the meantime, I'm going to look around and recognize the joy that is already here, and I'll flow with the changes, both expected and unexpected. Anything else would be a waste of my energy and would let too many days of living go by without being deeply lived.

Besides, when I look back, change has seemed to always teach me something and to leave me somehow expanded and more aware. Change seems to take one on a deeper inner journey. Maybe that's what change is all about.

In peace,

Patti

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."
~Anatole France

"Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal."
~Arthur Schopenhauer

"He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator."
~Sir Francis Bacon

"God grant us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
~Reinhold Niebuhr