Just as the group launched into Mozart's "Kegelstatt Trio," the Center's famous mascot, a 100-foot-tall red oak, began to flutter in the wind, its leaves painted in shades of saffron, peach and tangerine.
Let morning stargazing begin! The darkness of night, when all naked eye stars and constellations are visible, prevails until about 5:35 a.m. this week and 5:50 a.m. at month’s end.
Avid observers, known as amateur astronomers (amateur from amour, love, lovers of) are also very social, gathering together in clubs, at star parties, around observatories and planetariums.
After the ground freezes, gardeners look up to seed stalks and vines of flowering annuals and perennials to decide which to leave for wildlife and to disperse their seed in the landscape, and which to cut to collect seed for intentional sowing or to compost.
The Orionid meteor shower, predicted to peak before dawn on Sunday the 21st, is active through November 7. At peak, in a dark location under a moonless sky, a maximum of 15 to 20 shooting stars per hour are predicted.
Autumn’s full-grown clumps of grass do dance with the wind more fluidly than young, short ones. Weighty, seedy flower heads pull on the season’s longer stems, exaggerating their bowing and bobbing.
In that quiet, contemplative juncture of the year, when the gaudy foliage is past and the snow waits just around the bend, the minimalist remnant of my flower garden will suit me just fine.Â
There most certainly is a chill in the air. This chill is so pervasive and blowing from so many directions that our impulse is to bundle up, protect ourselves, cover our faces from this stinging wind.
Of course we know the science now, and intellectually we know that neither LUX nor NOX succeeds in overwhelming the other in this annual dance while we celebrate our harvests, but there is always something a bit unnerving about this gradual descent into twilight.
It has been tedious sorting through garden vegetables that were either stuffed into the refrigerator or placed in a cold room when brought in from the precipitous advent of frigid temperatures and arctic winds three weeks ago.
