Here goes!Posted by Maxine on September 9th, 2010
Well: I’m actually doing it. Blogging.
I’ll try to use this space to tell you what’s going on at Windhover Place; what we’re doing and thinking about here; what I’m reading… .
But today, let me just tell you about this particular day, September 9, 2010. The morning came on us wrapped in fog today. The valley, 850 feet or so below us, with its tiny perfect toy-world look of white houses, miniature cars and tractors, and fields of varying greens or freshly turned rose-red soil is only slowly resolving into view–like a Polaroid picture with colour and detail, at first faint and pallid, and then, moment by moment, emerging more clearly. I had remembered fall days here in Nova Scotia as mostly crystalline, but we are having high humidity again in the wake of the first hurricane to make landfall this season. (Early last Saturday morning, Hurricane Earl suddenly veered right instead of roaring up the Bay of Fundy as had been predicted. Had it stayed on course, the eye of the storm would have passed about 7 km from Windhover Place, & from our experience of Post-tropical storm Noel in 2007, that is a too close for comfort. We were battened down and braced–since the terrible experience of Hurricane Juan, Nova Scotians do not take hurricanes or tropical storms lightly–but while there were power outages and some trees down, the damage was much less than it might have been, and the Annapolis Valley apple crop, right now heavy and ripe, was not whipped and battered. So after several antsi days last week, a kind of quiet calm that matches the greyed and cooled-down day reigns.)
The large birds of prey are back or travelling through now. We see a lot of hawks (Northern Harriers, mostly, but an occasional kestrel or “windhover”) and eagles. I haven’t seen a hummingbird for the past three or four days, and the warblers seem to have passed through, so now we’re seeing the birds that will winter here with us: finches and chicadees and nuthatches, all such welcome feeders.
My best birthday present this year? A poem written by my 10-year old granddaughter, Clio. With her family, Clio spends most of a month here with us each summer since we have been in Nova Scotia. She captures the joy of this place:
Windhover Place
Birds Swooping
Laundry Flying
Clouds Floating
Eagles Soaring
Butterflies Fluttering
Ravens Airborne
Happiness Gliding…
Because
Windhover Place is where I
like to be!
Wishing you joy in your day, as well–
Maxine
September 14th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Aw, what a sweet poem. It certainly does capture the feel of your place. And it looks like there’s another writer in your family…
October 1st, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Thanks, Lori–yes, I think Clio does have a writer’s eye. What fun it will be to see that develop over time.
February 8th, 2011 at 5:39 am
Yay, Maxine! Lovely to see you in the blogosphere.
February 27th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
I followed something of a breadcrumb trail this snow-whitened Sunday noon…to find you! How wonderful your posts are! I can almost hear your voice in the telling of the stories. Please do keep writing.
June 27th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
I am only now getting the hang of replying to comments–please do keep in touch! I’ll try to do better at getting back to those of you who drop me a note–MH
June 27th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Ah, Rosie–we’ve had a recent conversation about how shy I feel in the huge, wide, uncharted blogosphere. But I’ll try to find my way to those who would like to read what’s on my mind from time to time. Cheers–MH
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