Daylight Savings Time -- Next Weekend

This is an early head's up for daylight savings time. It will end next weekend. Sometime between Saturday night, Nov. 5th and Sunday morning, Nov. 6th, turn your clocks back one hour. Enjoy the satisfying feeling of having slept late even though you get up at your regular time according to the clock. Click on the photo to enlarge and enjoy.

Today I had a confusing moment about DST. I am scheduled to participate in an international zoom call next Thursday. A friend who will be on the call from Warsaw told me to take note of the DST change. I assumed that meant the autumn change was upon us, but later realized that's not until NEXT weekend, after the call. So ... what was he talking about? Digging deeper I found that European countries end daylight savings time, which they call "summer time," on the last Sunday in October. Today.

Who knew? 

Tree and Sky

It's October and the leaves are turning colors. Today is chilly and drizzling here and I am indoors sitting beside a fire. It is the perfect time for a poem! Click the photos to enlarge.

Tree and Sky 

by William Carlos Williams

-- again 

the bare brush of 

the half-broken 

and already-written 

of tree stands alone

upon its battered hummock--- 

Above 

among the shufflings

of the distant 

cloud-rifts

vaporously 

opens the unmoving 

blue

 

 

 

Leaf Jokes!

 

The leaves in the mountains around Frackville, Pa are perfectly lovely right now. I had a short trip there this week. The autumn foliage was stunning. Click to enlarge.

It reminded me of a couple of things that I think I heard first in elementary school. Like...

    What happens when winter is coming? ... Autumn leaves! 

Why is it so easy to trick an autumn leaf? ... They'll fall for anything! 

And... I mainly use the word autumn instead of fall. I hope it does not lead to my downautumn. LoL!

Autumn Things

Autumn colors are getting better every day here in South Jersey.

Like this. Click to enlarge.

And this.

And -- from my favorite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, a stanza from the poem "Autumn:"

 

 

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”

 

 

Four O'Clocks

These old-fashioned garden flowers are called four o'clocks. They are so named because their flowers open in the late afternoon between around four and eight o'clock. The flowers stay open all night and close the following morning, although sometimes remaining open on cloudy days. Click to enlarge.

 

I had heard that their scent was delicious so I sniffed a few recently and I can attest that they have a lovely, sweet, orangey aroma.

But why do they bloom at night? And why produce a scent anyway?

Because their pollinators are mainly moths who are attracted by scents and are active at night. It all seems perfectly logical now, right?