Postcard from Daylight Savings

Dear Zoe,

The postcard you sent me from Utah was weird. The best part was the caption on the back which read, "The is mine is the largest man made open-pit excavation in the world..." Hey Mountain Press Prints, get an editor!

Back to the Blue Ridge, this damp dingle finds itself visited this morning by a most lovely gentle blanket of ambling fog. It rained in the night, and the air is cool and moist. It snowed last week 3 inches, before the leaves were even finished falling- what an odd display of burnt oranges and ruby reddish browns in a vast sea of snow white! The weirdest thing is that the snow didn't even freeze kill the garden; once it melted, the basil was still green. The killing frost came quietly and uneventfully three days later and was offhandedly noticed by gardeners in this holler in the Saturday morning hours.

Daylight savings morning finds all but the tightest gripping leaves fallen to the forest floor, and the trees across the holler appear as bare bones, revealing all manners of squirrel and hornet nests previously sheltered from view by summer's green cloak. I am (obviously) relishing in this extra hour to enjoy the warm cozy ambience of my home in this protected cove, the bone warming heat radianting from the wood stove, the loud snoring of the aging plott hound, the type of quiet created by the absence of a group of humans.

This day's agenda is sparse. Harvest celery and carrots from the garden. Spend the day with my sister. Make chicken pot pie from scratch.

I hope you, and whoever else might be eavesdropping on this postcard (hee hee), are enjoying the shift in time this morning. Godspeed.

Dana