Autumn Gardening

I suppose I could write about Bacon or Rosaldo, but I think I'd rather take a break from them for this post and relish the autumn season for a bit. We've just moved to a new place this fall and for the first time, in my life really, I have a yard to call my own (well, sort of -- we still rent), and I can plan out a few flower beds for the spring. Mmmmm. I love this time of year, in part because I love the feel in the air -- the coolness, the new smells -- drying leaves, wet grass. I love the rain and clouds and wind because it makes the indoors so cozy and inspires me to bake and to invite friends over for conversation and tea. There's nothing like a steaming mug of tea in your hand and a good friend across from you on a rainy autumn day. But I love this time of year, too, because it makes me think of the cyclical nature of our world -- we prepare flower beds and plant our bulbs now, anticipating the spring -- and we know it will come. It always does - isn't there something glorious in that regularity? And there's something lovely about this time of working with the earth and then the waiting, waiting, waiting. My summer flowers are still here - my double impatiens was vibrantly pink and green today in the soft rain - but I know the frost is coming soon and the impatiens will quell and die in its sharp cold bite. But I have this new patch of ground, ready for the spring -- it was so invigorating to get out in the air today, into the rain, and shovel some compost onto this new space of ground. I never thought I could get so excited about compost, but oh, I love the rich, brown, crumbly-ness of it -- it looks so ready to grow things. I have only to wait.

Fall Begins

Though fall officially began a couple of days ago, today, the first day back to Whatcom, felt like the real beginning of this autumnal season. The hustle and bustle of any school hall in the first week of classes is surely what most, perhaps jarringly, marks autumn's beginning. One week, I'm walking at a leisurely pace through deserted corridors, the next week, my walk is brisk and business-like, and I'm making my way past and through other brisk walkers and through echoing sound and conversation.

I suppose I like this sudden change, it's more exciting than jarring -- there's something rather amazing about this convergance of so many people at one place at one time. There's something amazing about the fact that we are all here for the united purpose of education, either to learn or to teach or to administrate that learning and teaching. So many of us, so many different kinds of us, and we are here together, in this one place -- we come here for ourselves, for our own purposes, but we find ourselves intersecting with the lives and purposes of others and, and I know we will be changed by those intersections, those meetings.

I wonder, at the start of this year, whom will I meet? Whom will I be changed by? Whom will I perhaps affect in some way or another? Already, I am intrigued by the students in my class -- I'm looking forward to knowing them better, to hearing their voices, seeing the paths on which their thoughts take them. And I wonder, what will they teach me?

This fall day.
This school day.
Now, we begin.