Excavated Writing. Looking from November to February, written in 2003

The season comes on slowly; all the leaves have dropped but the last few that cling with gray tenacity to the viney fingers of the pear tree. The season grows wetter each day, piles of late raked leaves stick together like bits of wet brown paper.

My garden has become old. The wrinkled bag lady heads of the last rough sunflowers and mums are brown and twisted, their stems sticking up like bony arms. It is tempting to go out into the garden and tidy, to pull and clip and prune. But the blowsy dead foliage warms and protects the living garden, all the little secret hearths hoarding next year's treasures under the ground.

I love seeing the birds the cold weather has brought. Seedpods sway like lumpy lollipops under the tiny nuthatches and chickadees weight. Raucous Jays pounce on the sunflower heads. Spent Sunflowers look like drunks lined up in the garden ; still standing but leaning to the side more every day. The Jays quarrel and wrestle constantly scattering more seeds on the ground than they manage to take. Juncos on the ground busily clean house and nothing is wasted.

The rain and fog have set in earnest, green moss grows on the concrete pavers in the garden and with every freeze more chips spall from the rosemary pot to the path.

It’s only November but already I look forward to late February when I will be in barn boots in the wet, poking around anxiously to see whose nose is appearing; who has made it through and who has not. I will be making mental lists of chores and hatching plans drinking tea in the kitchen overlooking the garden. Outside the white sky turns itself inside out again.

"Searching for the great white bargain, but finding only the whale of discontent."