Our November Landscape

The landscape around the valley provides an interesting interlude in the seasons, stark and bare, usually not yet snow-covered.  It's a landscape I enjoy, because it lays bare the underlying bones of things, things that disappear in summer behind the vegetation, and in winter under the snow.

With the move back to standard time Nov. 1st, it's not quite as dark in the morning, but the fencerow out our winder is stark and bare, the leaves all down.  This was 6.30 today; I'm up earlier than I really want to be!

The woodlot across the road is also totally bare, and suddenly becomes completely open; you can see right through what was a wall of green in the summer.  Temperature is a big influence on walking though, the ground surface tending to be slippery and mucky if we have much rain, when the temperatures stay above zero, making a walk with the dog impossibly dirty.  A few degrees colder, it's frozen and delightful for walking.

Perhaps my favourite pieces of the valley landscape are all the old boulders in the fencerows.  When you explore the old fields at this season, you see the incredible work settlers and their teams of horses did to clear this valley for farming.

We have lots of old fields in the valley, as former farmland in places too steep, too rocky, or too shallow is abandoned and starts regrowing.  Dried brown Goldenrod and Queen Annes's lace decorate our own meadow out back.

Crops are mostly off, just some fields of corn still to harvest, on the days when it's not too wet.  Some fields are ploughed for spring - this one just a little too close to the Bruce Trail.  Seventy feet of trail was bulldozed flat.

And one of my favourite fall trees, the Tamarack, our only 'deciduous conifer', is finally losing its needles.  This is a small patch of Tamarack seedlings I planted out back, just for the pleasure of seeing them turn yellow in November.

If you're keeping track, you realize that I'm back home from heart surgery last week.  A zombie for four days (two of which I don't remember at all), I started to feel human again on day 5 and 6.  But the medical approach these days is to get you up and moving asap, so I was up in a chair for all meals starting on day 2, and walking (slowly I admit), on day 4.  You have to be able to care for yourself to go home, so day 5 and 6 were busy with getting all those tubes out, practising sitting up and lying down without using your arms, and so on.  I can't say enough good about the medical staff at St. Mary's in Kitchener, Ontario, for being both so kind and so competent. Nor can I say enough about Ontario's health care system - our biggest bill so far has been parking.  I have a long way to go, but I'm apparently doing very well so far.  I may write more to keep you posted.

Linking to:

Yes, I'm back.  Survived the heart surgery and 'resting comfortably at home' as they say.