Seasons

By Reita O"Neal Jackson

Leaves drift from the trees, opening up vistas that have been hidden for a while. Flowers are sparse. The garden has stopped producing and is in the process of being tidied for the coming winter's sleep. A dozen ruby throated hummingbirds vie for a place at the feeders, gulping up nourishment before they begin their long journey.

The three goose families that called our pond home for weeks have all gone. The goslings, tiny and yellow when they first swam here were images of their parents when they departed. Perhaps we'll see them again.

The foxes are long gone from the back yard where we watched them as they cavorted right outside our windows. We rarely glimpse the triplet baby skunks anymore, though there are always some animal to swoop in and take their place for a few days.

There's a slight chill to the air as winter prepares to enter the seasonal cycle. My blessings are many in this country place I've called home for more than forty years. Every day is different, delighting us with beauty and change at every turn as the seasons unfold outside our door.

Seasons celebrates the passage of time and the joy that comes with each season as it unfolds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hickory Hill
• Release date: Jan 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224965229

Reita O"Neal Jackson

The author has lived more than forty years surrounded by woods, meadows, and ponds, with an ever-changing sky overhead. It is a wonderful, healing place to commune with nature. Reita O'Neal Jackson was a teacher, social worker, registered nurse, bed and breakfast owner, avid gardener, and school volunteer before she retired to live simply on the land that has always been her haven.  

Book preview

Seasons

Reita O"Neal Jackson

Published by Hickory Hill, 2024.

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

SEASONS

First edition. January 31, 2024.

Copyright © 2024 Reita O"Neal Jackson.

ISBN: 979-8224965229

Written by Reita O"Neal Jackson.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

SEASONS

Also By Reita O"Neal Jackson

About the Author

To my family - a blessing in every way. Thanks to Nate for the beautiful cover design.

SEASONS

October 14

Halloween is upon us and with its passing will come Remembrance Day, followed by Thanksgiving, my birthday, winter solstice, Christmas, and then my 51st wedding anniversary and New Year’s Eve, which occur simultaneously. These are the days I celebrate perpetually, though there will be days to celebrate that are not planned and come without fanfare, but become memorable, nonetheless.

The mornings are mostly cool now, and after days of welcome rain the sun has shown itself again, heating up the afternoons and delivering gasping humidity. We are in the deep South, after all. Crispness will come, bringing frost, bare branches, a nip in the air - and sending animals and plants into hibernation. We will drag out our long sleeves and jackets, quilts and afghans, and change our sandals for hardier shoes.

I have begun my autumn rituals. Arrangements of berry branches, the purple, yellow, and orange stems of forsythia, red spider lilies, goldenrod, coleus, rosemary, and maple leaves sit atop the mantel, the tables, the kitchen island, and anywhere a splash of color is needed. The nandina berries this time of year have changed from green to bronze. They will be red in time for Christmas.

Bright orange mums brighten up the front porch. A magnolia wreath arranged with dangling stems of faux nuts hangs on the door. Outside, my pots are filled with rosemary, dianthus, snapdragons, sage, pansies, lettuces, collards, chard, and even a cotton plant. They are caged against the deer that invade the yard since our dog, Sam, passed away. He always kept intruders at bay without any help from us, so it’s been quite intriguing for us to try to outwit the wild animals that roam right outside our door.

Not too many weeks ago, three skunk kits tore across the yard towards my husband and me as we walked from the car to the front door. Once safely inside, we watched them from the window. Another day, we noticed a beautiful red fox, a large raccoon, and an armadillo gathered as if for a meeting out the back window.  Each stood his ground and seemed more curious about the others than anything else. Finally, the raccoon ambled away, then the armadillo, and finally the fox.

Squirrels are a given, as are the deer. Once in a while a coyote wanders by. Ducks, geese, cranes, and herons come to the pond outside our back door. Rabbits are rare these days, and we haven’t seen a quail or an owl in years, though we sometimes hear an owl hooting in the night. Hawks can be seen most often in the autumn, and we catch sight of them in tall trees watching for prey. Other birds of various kinds eat at our feeder and splash in the bird bath. We just restocked our bird feed and will begin filling our feeders soon. The lone hummingbird left only a week ago.

At this time of year, I would normally be decorating the house for Halloween, but no grandchild will be here to see the spiderwebs draped over doors and windows with giant spiders clinging to them, or bats in flight across the walls, or rats running up the stairs. Witch hats usually hang suspended, ghosts and goblins of every type lurk in corners, and lighted jack-o-lanterns grin from the hearth and tabletops. There are no toothy apple smiles, no jack-o-lantern peppers vomiting out green dip, no cheese string witch fingers, no cauldrons boiling soup, and no candy witch hats. No trips to the pumpkin patch.

It will be different not having at least one child here, but to be truthful, they’re outgrowing calm Halloween décor and prefer to be frightened to shrieks in haunted houses. They change as they grow – like the seasons, and like everything in life. It is natural. They will get treat bags from us and have already  been treated to pizza and cupcakes – and a trip to the garden center with us and their mom to pick out pumpkins for them to carve.

I have made my annual pumpkin pie and ate most of it myself! I have always loved them, but I’ve found that few people share my taste for them. That’s alright. I will always make one as long as I’m able, anyway, just as I will make the fruitcake that has been eaten by my mother’s family since 1928, her birth year. It is not a true fruitcake if you consider that it has no alcohol and no dried fruit, but it is delicious – though, again, I am the only one in the family that makes it still, or craves at least a small taste of it every year.

The ginkgo trees are butter yellow, and a couple of maples are showing red  leaves. There is a gorgeous yellow maple in the woods hidden from sight. We must make a special trip off the paths to see it, but it is well worth the venture. I will check its color soon.

Before Halloween even appears, I am making plans for the rest of the holidays. How will I mark Remembrance Day? Poppies, yes. A donation to a veterans group, yes. Rosemary, yes. Family gatherings must be planned far in advance, so there are already dates set aside for celebrating holidays. With a blended family, there are other family groups to consider, so holidays are not always celebrated on the actual holiday, but in close proximity to those dates. And instead of one or two Christmas celebrations, my grandchildren might have four or five before the season is over.

The leaves are changing colors and drifting from the trees, grass is thinning so that mowing is coming to an end, and the water in the pond is still and dark and deep - teeming with turtles having a last hurrah before colder days send them into the mud below. Bare branches allow one to see vistas that have been shielded from sight by canopies of thick leaves, the days shorten, the sky seems even bluer than on balmy spring days, the persimmons hang from the trees, and acorns and hickory nuts cover the ground. Leaves are raked. Fires are lit. Soup is a constant. Hot chocolate and s’mores resurface. Afghans are pulled over laps and books enjoyed. Such is fall.

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October 15

The moon is now a waxing gibbous moon and will be full on October 20th. A night or two ago it was streaked with cloud cover and surrounded with a red and blue halo. I will be watching it nightly, as I always do when it is visible, so that I can enjoy the transformation of this bright Hunter’s Moon. With luck, it will remain clear – that’s what is forecast, so I’ll hope.

The year has been wetter than most, but lately, sunshine has prevailed, so it was a pleasure to hear a short-lived gush of rain on the windows in the night. My pots were well watered, the birdbath filled, and grasses, trees, and other plants refreshed.

Yesterday, before the rain, the clouds were huge and layered – pale gray, smoke-gray, black, and white mixed with gray. There were portals of blue sky shining through the layers of clouds, a magnificent sight. The darker, lowering clouds looked like boxes stacked one on top of the other, or massive boulders.

Today, the sky is blue, not a cloud to be found. The air is brisk and has turned overnight to light jacket weather. I’ll take this any day to the humid, hot as a firecracker weather we have had off and on this fall.

We have a new UTV, red, which adds its own burst of color in the woods. We named her Merry and took her for a drive through the woods paths. The wide paths are leaf-covered, and some have overhanging branches that form tunnels through the land. A couple of tree trunks had huge orangey-red mushrooms as big as a man’s hand jutting out like shelves. It is said that trees with these shelf mushrooms are dying and if that is true, the mushrooms are a phenomenal method to announce impending death. We saw blue mushrooms, red, yellow, white, and brown ones. All beautiful and always a treat to see on walks (or drives) through the woods.

On a later trip to town, we saw the first tinges of yellow in the leaves of some of the trees. Round hay bales lay scattered like thrown dice in the fields. One rarely sees square bales anymore, though I remember in years past spending a part of several hot days in the field loading a trailer and truck bed with bales of fragrant green hay for the seven horses we somehow ended up with. We got our hay from various farmers and usually began buying hay in early summer and sometimes got our last load in October. It is hard work to load hay and then to unload it into the barn, but satisfying somehow.

Soybeans are ready for harvesting. We have watched them from the time they were newly planted, turning green and lush, to their gray, bedraggled- looking state now. The snowy bolls of cotton shine against the green and rust- colored leaves of cotton bushes. Cotton used to be much taller than it is now. That’s supposed to be an improvement, but I, not having to grow cotton for a living, prefer the tall cotton. How else can you truthfully say someone is walking in tall cotton?

One delightful yard we passed was so packed with Halloween fun, spilling from the porch into the yard with ghosts, witches, goblins, jack o’lanterns, spiderwebs, and so many other seasonal decorations, one could not have easily walked through it.

We delivered snow cones to the grandchildren and visited them for a few minutes. It might be their last ones of the season, as most snow cone stands close for the season at the end of October. There are other treats to take their place, however, so all is not lost.

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October 17

Another gorgeous, sunshiny day. I wore a light denim shirt over my short sleeves to mow and was comfortable in the 48 degree weather. It was easy mowing as the wispy grasses were quite sparse in places as I puttered over them. The orchard and the strip of open land on this side of the pond and the one below it are now neat and tidy.

Merry was taken out again and ridden over the fields and through the meadows and woods. We are getting used to her and it is a treat to be able to easily explore most of our land from her seat.

The pond is full of water and turtles. More turtles than we really need, by a long shot, but they are interesting to watch swimming along with their heads raised out of the water, or ensconced on a floating log or along the banks of the pond sunning themselves.

I planted a dozen red spider lily bulbs in the front flower bed, right outside the living room window. I love these flowers. When Sam died, my grandson said, Grandma, could we plant some spider lilies on Sam’s grave? And, of course, we did. Unbeknownst to me, until I ordered more bulbs to add to those already scattered about the yard, these beautiful flowers are synonymous with final goodbyes. In Buddhist writings, they are said to guide the dead through the cycle of rebirth. My grandson knows many things, and he knew this. I am always learning.

We attended my grandson’s Taekwondo rank test yesterday. He is a first degree black belt and is working on his second degree. In the dojo, there are only four black belts, all teens, and each is amazingly fierce and fluid in their movements. Their control is something we each should strive for. We are proud of him for many things, and this is one of them. He was headed off for a weekend with his dad, but we enjoyed a luscious, comfort-food lunch with our daughter.

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October 19

A thick, swirly fog danced along the surface of the pond this morning and I look forward to many more fall mornings such as this. In Scandinavian lore, niflheim is the misty realm of the dead. Hel is its ruler and is the goddess of the underworld. The word is from niflheimr, which translates to  the world of fog. There are lots of  negative words to describe fog, and many people, including me, find it a little disconcerting to be caught out in a dense fog so that our surroundings are lost to us – pea soup conditions. It would almost seem that one could enter another realm as we stumble through a fog so thick. But I see nothing else objectionable about it and to walk through a not too dense fog over land that you know, while surreal, is peaceful and magical. There is nothing but you and the fog. It dampens you with its mists and curtains the landscape so that everything you see is ghostly and spiritual. It is the closest most of us will ever get to visiting another world.

I mowed the meadows this morning and the area in front of our cabins. My husband set fire to another brush pile, and while he watched over it, he mowed an area nearby that used to be a lily bed and at one time had two huge, decaying azaleas in it. He had chopped the azaleas out and removed the large stones that rimmed the lily bed, but after cleaning it out, it had been left to become a weed patch and an eyesore. It looks much better now, nicely mowed.

Fall is a time of tidying. Sprucing up the land for winter and the spring that follows, burning the debris from too many winds and storms, removing summer’s plants from the pots and replacing them with more vibrant, healthy plants are a part of it. Cleaning house – how I loathe it – is another part. The windows are so filthy from the summer’s dust one can barely see out. It’s a waste to expend the energy on cleaning them during the summer, however, as the weekly mowing just dirties them up again. That is a chore for me very soon. I’ve scoured inside the house, throwing out, re-purposing things, cleaning the floors, mopping, dusting. Of course, housecleaning must go along weekly, if not daily, but a really deep cleaning only occurs twice a year in this house – once in autumn and once in spring. I hope I’ll have enough energy to brighten up some of the paint this fall, but if not, spring won’t be long in coming.

I must not forget to order the amaryllis bulbs this week. They are so beautiful during the Christmas season, and I like them much better than poinsettias. All the other plants I use during the Christmas season I can gather from the garden and woods – rosemary, holly, ivy, mistletoe, pine, cedar.

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October 21

I have ordered two quite expensive double dragon amaryllises. Any plant with dragon in its name is usually ordered. My grandson has loved dragons since he was tiny, so we have planted snapdragons, have tasted dragon fruit, have seriously considered buying a dragon’s blood tree (too expensive), have a small stone dragon curled up asleep in the garden, studied dragonflies, have read every book about dragons and have seen most movies, and have miniature dragons placed strategically around the house and garden.

Also, on a trip to town yesterday, I found some Minerva and Red Lion amaryllis bulbs, bought them, and planted them this morning.

Warmer today. A light rain in the night.

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October 25

Crops are being harvested daily. Fields are littered with cotton bales, and the cotton that blows loose onto the sides of the road are testament to their being hauled away by the truckload now. Machinery is busy in the soybean fields, dust obliterating the machines from sight at times. Soon, all the fields will lie fallow until the next planting in the spring.

The sweet gum trees are now showing their yellows, reds, and oranges. When it’s cloudy, the fall colors are more vivid, and when the sun shines through the trees, they glow. My favorite, orange-berried plant grows wild in the woods, and I will have to pick some branches of the small pumpkin-shaped berries soon. They add such a blast of color everywhere I put them that the house seems more fall-ready when they are ensconced in containers inside.

Hubby rode Merry down to look at the yellow maple in the woods, and reported that it is not at peak yet. We will take another ride today or tomorrow to see how things have changed in the last few days. Our grandson was here overnight, and he got a chance to ride through the woods to see the fall changes and to meet the stray dog that lives at the barn.

I try to go out daily and roam around the yard, poking my finger in the soil in the pots, watering if needed, picking branches of colorful leaves or some of the few flowers that are still blooming. I will gather a few leaves of the rainbow chard for our salads tonight. We grew chard for the first time several years ago when we re-started the garden at our grandson’s school and gave lessons to several of the classes. We planted it for the beauty of its leaves and because children will usually agree to taste all the different salad greens. In fact, we were amazed that nearly all of them wanted to taste everything we grew! We had several tastings from the garden that went over well for the children and the teachers. It’s amazing how few people these days really understand where all that they eat comes from.

Crunchy brown leaves cover the woods’ paths, crackling under our feet as we walk. The pink camellia has dropped some of its pink petals, adding a spot of color on the ground. The spider lilies have shot their leaves up now that the red flowers are gone. Acorns, hickory nuts, and sweet gum balls litter the ground. The borders of the pastures are tinged with red and yellow and purple. The white, fragrant ginger lilies are still blooming, their smell, like gardenias, heavenly, as long as they are outdoors, but if brought indoors, one will do nicely.

I’ve been gathering the ingredients for the Halloween treat plates I will take the grandchildren on Friday. Twisted bread (mummies), mini-cupcakes, mini jack o’lantern pizzas, orange Fanta, babybel cheese (pumpkins), chips and blood (bright red salsa dip). I’ve found you can get away with labeling anything the way you like on holidays, and it is accepted!

Spiderwebs are everywhere! I wish the spiders would build higher and not face height. There was an orb weaver with a gorgeous web and three egg sacks across our back door. We named her Charlotte and loved to watch her. However, the web got to be too much, and I relocated her to the woodpile. Within days, she was back, or at least an orb weaver was there, and one can only assume it would be too coincidental for two of them to build over the door so close together. I relocated it to the wooden fence out back. I have not seen her since, but another type of spider built the biggest web I’ve ever seen and strung it from the rooftop right outside the same door to the outside party lights. He was smart enough not to block the door and to build his web high above our heads. We were set to leave him there, but he and his web were gone within a few days.

Walking in the woods is wrought with foreboding with spider webs draped between every two trees, especially across the paths, catching us across our faces unless we remember to carry spider sticks in front, which we wave around to knock the webs down before they have a chance to horrify us by splatting us across the face. We would prefer to leave the webs and will go around them if we see them, but the stick is insurance that we don’t walk into them.

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October 26

This morning was blue skied, cool enough for long sleeves, and as perfect as a fall day can be. I took a walk down the driveway and through