Listening to the Rain

Repost from December 8, 2014, from Red Bluff, California:

We are today getting some much needed rain from a large storm coming up from the South Pacific into California.  Winds are now in excess of 45 miles per hour.  Rainfall up to six  inches is predicted for the next few days.  Temperatures here are between 45F and 55F.  We expect considerable snow in the mountains above 5,000 feet.  We have not had such a ferocious storm in Red Bluff since 2008. 

The elementary school district I work for on a part-time basis, 24 hours per week, is closed today because of dangerous road conditions for our buses and flooding. 

A day for some home chores, reading, exercise, and listening to the storm outside.  

December: Quotes, Poems, Sayings 


Water and Rain: Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Facts

"I have been one acquainted with the night
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain
I have out-walked the furthest city light
I have looked down the saddest city lane
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say goodbye;
And further still at an unearthly height;
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night."
-   Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night


"Water, the Hub of Life. Water is its mater and matrix, mother and medium. Water is the most extraordinary substance! Practically all its properties are anomalous, which enabled life to use it as building material for its machinery. Life is water dancing to the tune of solids.
-  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi  


"Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life."
-  John Updike

Here are some photographs that Karen took around our yard this morning.  We are checking and concerned as the heavy rain continues.    

The Harmonies of Autumn

The Last Second of Summer

The bare branches of an old shrub
Above its fallen scarlet leaves─
Emptiness or forms? 
Chrysanthemums in full bloom
Below clear blue skies─
Forms and emptiness? 

The first second of autumn,
The last second of summer─
Neither Forms nor Emptiness,
The spaces of past time,
The realms of dead minds;
Or, bereft of Space and Time,
The Singularity of the Big Bang Sublime. 
  

-  Mike Garofalo, Autumn Poems

   Mabon,  9/22/2020  
   Reading The Heart Sutra from the Buddhist scriptures. 

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting
and autumn a mosaic of them all."
- Stanley Horowitz

"There is a harmony 
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 
Which through the summer is not heard or seen, 
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!" 
- Percy Bysshe Shelley 

"The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly
changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools."
- Henry Beston, Northern Farm

Autumn- Quotes, Sayings, Lore

November - Quotes, Sayings, Lore  

Mabon, Autumn Equinox Celebrations: Lore, Quotes, Bibliography, Notes

Beautiful autumn colors on the trees in our neighborhood.  Wonderful.  

We have been improving our winter vegetable garden.  

Here are a few photos that Karen took in our back yard in Red Bluff.

 

Our Winter Garden