December 4, 2013

The peak of the Rincon and its cliffs and boulders are white and dancing on the eye in the sun, making those evergreen forests on their far heights look so much the darker.  A shining white cloud crowns all, itself under a long clean blue sky.  Cottonwoods glow yellow below.  Doubtless a storm comes: the air is warm, yet has some tang to it, is even salty, and there is a strong waft of change.  Caribbean Horseweed on the pastures grows on as if none of this is happening, and even shows fresh flower buds, and on the irrigation hoses are the black spiders of Summer.  Canadian Horseweed, presumably more attuned to North America has already turned into seeds or dormant biennial rosettes and thus is well ready for Winter.

American Pipits drop in again–they’ve been elsewhere lately, probably over on the just-germinated seedling alfalfa pasture of our fence-neighbor ranch.  Midday 70 degrees, I am still eating lunch with dragonflies.

The last bat before the year’s deep freezes come on flies down the Cascabel Road, ahead of the truck in the dusk