Cricket McRaeActually, the frost is white, but it blackens all but the most cold hardy plants. The leaves on the cottonwoods haven't even turned yellow yet, but we've already had snow and temperatures cold enough to delay the Rockies/Phillies playoff series by a day.
The change was somewhat abrupt, but that's the way things go in Colorado. Learn to roll with it, or move.
So green tomatoes are piled in bowls and stacked in baskets to ripen. Beets, potatoes, carrots and leeks hide in the root cellar and braided onions hang in the basement pantry next to jars of pickles and dried herbs and honey. Below them rows of acorn, butternut and spaghetti squash await on shelves. Pots of parsley, rosemary, basil and thyme march down the window sill, adjusting to their sudden move indoors. The big freezer in the garage overflows with beans, broccoli, corn, peppers, chard, tomatoes -- and an eighth of a Charolais cow.
Soup's on the stove. Bread's rising. Deer are pawing through the thin crust of snow in the front yard to get at the fallen apples.
And the urge to write rides under my skin, a constant itch.
Sometimes writing is fun. Sometimes it's a job. You have to show up and do it, and if your muse deigns to ride along, all the better. But there is something about this time of year that affects my creativity in a primitive, visceral way.
In The Midnight Disease, Alice Flaherty examines writing mania. This time of year I feel I've caught hypergraphia like some kind of yearly flu.
Chunks of time are like candy. I play with ideas, wallow in words. In Sue Ann's post last week she related how this intense love of writing stays with her, drives her. It is not always the case for me. Oh, I love it all right, but it does not always sound this siren song.
I wonder what it is about this time of year that hits me so squarely in the creative plexus. Could it be related to all those years of facing back-to-school time? The feeling is familiar. Or perhaps it is an offshoot of my uber-nesting, the stocking up for cold weather. I do, after all, write about colonial home crafts. One activity is bound to feed the other. I can only hope that the stockpile of ideas and projects will get me through the winter.
Does this time of year affect your creativity? Your writing output?
The change was somewhat abrupt, but that's the way things go in Colorado. Learn to roll with it, or move.
So green tomatoes are piled in bowls and stacked in baskets to ripen. Beets, potatoes, carrots and leeks hide in the root cellar and braided onions hang in the basement pantry next to jars of pickles and dried herbs and honey. Below them rows of acorn, butternut and spaghetti squash await on shelves. Pots of parsley, rosemary, basil and thyme march down the window sill, adjusting to their sudden move indoors. The big freezer in the garage overflows with beans, broccoli, corn, peppers, chard, tomatoes -- and an eighth of a Charolais cow.
Soup's on the stove. Bread's rising. Deer are pawing through the thin crust of snow in the front yard to get at the fallen apples.
And the urge to write rides under my skin, a constant itch.
Sometimes writing is fun. Sometimes it's a job. You have to show up and do it, and if your muse deigns to ride along, all the better. But there is something about this time of year that affects my creativity in a primitive, visceral way.
In The Midnight Disease, Alice Flaherty examines writing mania. This time of year I feel I've caught hypergraphia like some kind of yearly flu.
Chunks of time are like candy. I play with ideas, wallow in words. In Sue Ann's post last week she related how this intense love of writing stays with her, drives her. It is not always the case for me. Oh, I love it all right, but it does not always sound this siren song.
I wonder what it is about this time of year that hits me so squarely in the creative plexus. Could it be related to all those years of facing back-to-school time? The feeling is familiar. Or perhaps it is an offshoot of my uber-nesting, the stocking up for cold weather. I do, after all, write about colonial home crafts. One activity is bound to feed the other. I can only hope that the stockpile of ideas and projects will get me through the winter.
Does this time of year affect your creativity? Your writing output?
