Right in front of me, a brindled hawk perched on a small, winter-stripped sapling, his beak leading his head slowly from side to side. Seconds later he cast himself aloft, only about 6 feet or so, and stopped, as if he’d hit a glass ceiling, hovering in the air, wings bating and talons clenching, ready to stoop. I couldn’t see, of course, what it was that had caused his alert attention to spring to readiness for attack, but he was still hovering in the same spot by the time I drove out of sight.
Another blue-sky autumn dawn, but it’s clouding up now and the wind is rising. The sun is coming up so late nowadays that even I can see its debut. Last night, the moon at 6:30 p.m. was a bright shiny beacon in a cobalt sky. The man in the moon was smiling, freshly scrubbed, squeaky clean, shining. I didn’t know until this morning that there was an eclipse last night…what a bummer, because it was so clear I would have been able to see every degree of change.
Tonight is pumpkin carving night. We have 4 huge pumpkins. When we went into the garage last night to bag up the berries and leaves we collected last month, all 4 of the pumpkins were mostly orange, which was a relief since the last time I peeked in 2 of them had been mostly still green. One pumpkin is slated to become a Bionicle…the Mask of Light (no prizes for guessing whose pumpkin that is), and one will have a happy face and one will have a scary face. I’m not sure what to do with the 4th one…but, since we’re taking them with us to the AWC Halloween party, and I have FOUR PUMPKINS TO CARVE, maybe I’ll just chop an A W C into it and leave it at that.