{"id":959,"date":"2005-09-04T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-05T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2005\/09\/04\/winding-down\/"},"modified":"2022-07-05T14:49:05","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T12:49:05","slug":"winding-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2005\/09\/04\/winding-down\/","title":{"rendered":"WINDING DOWN"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems as if the sun is setting so much faster these days, but here it is 8:30 at night and there is still a westerly glow. Maybe it&#8217;s just that we don&#8217;t notice it when the skies are overcast or it&#8217;s raining, compared with the clear and crisp weather we&#8217;ve been blessed with this week. The trees are a bit droopy, on the verge of being droppy, but they haven&#8217;t started shedding yet. Most of the fields have been cleared, and there are only a few dotted with thick wheels of hay still waiting to be collected for winter storage. I haven&#8217;t seen any sugarbeets by the side of the road, and no long lines of geese flying south, so it&#8217;s not really autumn quite, but the feel is in the air. It&#8217;s time to rotate the t-shirts in and the sweaters out and the fleece jackets. It&#8217;s time to bed the garden down for those frosty mornings, and make sure the scrapers are in both cars.<\/p>\n<p>For some reason, I don&#8217;t mind at all. It&#8217;s not just because I love autumn, love the changing colors and the way the world works so smoothly, cycling around right on schedule.  It&#8217;s not just because I prefer cooler temperatures, love the snap in the air and the crackle underfoot, the way the horses grow shaggier with each passing day. It&#8217;s not just the urge to hibernate, getting out the winter duvet, that cozy thick warm cover that turns the bed into a nest. It&#8217;s not just the way the grass silvers with tiny diamonds every morning as we depart and the kids delight in the silly faces I scrape on their car windows before removing the crackled coating so I can see to drive. And neither is it just the hope of snow, that wonderful white transformation that&#8217;s like a new view on the everyday scenes we take for granted.<\/p>\n<p>I know that I&#8217;ll complain about the lack of sunlight, and shiver uncontrollably when I have to leave the comfort of my home. It&#8217;s part and parcel of the cycle. There can&#8217;t be one without the other and I wouldn&#8217;t enjoy the sunshine I get half so much if it was sunny without fail every day. Its very absence is what causes me to treasure so much its presence. It&#8217;s nice stuff when you can get it, those summer days.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a time of rest for this side of the world, a time for the earth to relax and renew. Even though it&#8217;s the busiest time of the year for ME, for us; it&#8217;s the promise that the earth gives each year, that winter is a temporary thing, a short and silent sleep, at the end of which the light returns, the warmth returns, and everything begins again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems as if the sun is setting so much faster these days, but here it is 8:30 at night and there is still a westerly glow. Maybe it&#8217;s just that we don&#8217;t notice it when the skies are overcast or it&#8217;s raining, compared with the clear and crisp weather we&#8217;ve been blessed with this week. The trees are a bit droopy, on the verge of being droppy, but they haven&#8217;t started shedding yet. Most of the fields have been cleared, and there are only a few dotted with thick wheels of hay still waiting to be collected for winter&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-wonderfulworld"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5521,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions\/5521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}