My Life on the Mississippi

November

2024

November in this part of Minnesota is often the month of the clearest transition. The trees are bare, the leaves are mostly picked up and the evergreens become more noticeable.

The warm clothes come out, the coats and caps, the gloves and scarves, the sweaters.

The fall work continues, the tarps are fastened down, the kindling is chopped, the gardens are trimmed back, the snow blower is on the tractor and the snow shovels are out.

Finally, in mid-November rains begin after a long dry spell and shortly after that, the first snow on the 20^th. The first snow also signals the time for cozy things, reading by the fires with a mug of hot apple cider.

Time for stews and homemade bread, for soups and Sunday dinners of roasts and gravy.

The chipmunks seem to disappear with the snow, but the squirrels are still busy.

As always, there are birds at the feeder; finches, chickadees, woodpeckers, bluejays, nuthatches, but still no dark-eyed juncos.

One day there was a single dear walking warily across the yard now that hunting season is here.

The turkeys continue to feed and seem to be auditioning for Thanksgiving.

Above a wintry moon.

And, as always, the river.