Saturday November 20th
I have been waiting for December to come, Californian winters providing a welcome change from the long warm days of the rest of the year. The sun doesn’t rise over the mountains until past eight o’clock in the morning, early mornings still grey and at half-light. Yesterday I lit candles at lunchtime and put them on the whitewashed dining table. It was daylight but with enough greyness in it that one knew it would be dark by the end of the afternoon. Nighttime comes fast in the mountains. One minute you can see and the next minute one is in complete darkness.
Leaves are beginning to drop from the almond tree just outside the window and it will be bare until gentle pink blossoms announce the beginning of Spring. The sycamores, who have reacted to every weather uncertainty this year, stifling heat, one day of blasting rain, followed by more scorching sun, are finally deciding to drop their enormous parchment like leaves for winter.
The elegant pale leaves drape themselves on top of the succulents, get caught in the branches of the oaks, and announce fully that they are done for this year. Soon the five tall trees that are their own intimate screen, will be bare. Winter curtains will have to do their job.
Pitch black nights have arrived in the canyon, although we rarely go out in the evenings. When we do join a neighbor for a glass of wine we each take an enormous and hefty flashlight and watch carefully where we walk or what we might bump into. It makes me smile. We really do live in a forest in all its glory.
