something i love

is that in the fall, if you look out of the corner of your eye - it can look a lot like spring...
that same sparce, pale yellowgreen of leaves just at the tips of branches.


For me it reinforces that 'beginning-is-the-end-is-the-beginning' kind of feeling
that seasonal shifts stir up. A peace
that can be found in repetition, in the certainty of a new season,
and in the knowledge that the only thing you can be sure of

is change.
There's a lot of comfort in that, I think.



So, with faith in this revolution of cycles,
I am planting.




Or prepping, anyway...a bed for garlic.
We've covered most of the garden-to-be with weed-mat
to supress the weeds and grass beneath it.
But we left this little square
to prep and plant this fall.



Another sign of fall...the return of cattle:


Many of the large ranches around here own land in the Big Hole Valley too, and their cattle spend summers grazing at those higher altitudes, while in our neighborhood much of the land is farmed or hayed. With cooler weather and the end of the growing season, cattle are trucked back here to winter in the comparitavely warmer fields of the Beaverhead Valley.


The fields we've walked past and driven by all summer; always in some stage of the growing, cutting, drying, baling process...are suddenly full of wide-eyed cattle.