Instantaneous Shifts

 It seems to happen in an instant, these changeling days as I grow ever older.   Seasonal changes that used to take...well, a whole season...now seemingly occur in days, sometimes hours.  Just yesterday, (or on the 11th of November, to be honest and accurate) I was out and taking a picture of what I suspected was the last rose of the season, the English rose 'Heritage', seen here along with the very cold honeybee, the latter frantically gathering pollen to store away against a long winter.

And then, suddenly, instantaneously, this morning my southern view from the kitchen window turned from this colorful scene, which has been unchanged for several weeks:

To this, a Dicksonian still life created by a completely unpredicted and clandestine snow:

My front (northward) view this morning was no different in tone or despair, a world untouched yet by human or dog and bland and frigid, converted in an instantaneous, almost magical shift from autumn to winter, regardless of the date on my human-created calendar.

And now I'm relegated to joining my garden's Rip Van Winkle by awakening to a world changed, transformed both in appearance and liveliness, as cold and dead and hard and outright unwelcoming today as it was warm and sunny and vibrant yesterday.   I begin a winter inside, quiet weekends and periods of staring out the windows, sleeping under an opened book just as my cement friend outside.  It will be some time before I venture outside again to work and play, to smell and run my fingers through warm dirt, to plant life and nurture its growth.  I sleep and wait inside, hopefully not for the 20 years of Irving's tale, but at least fretfully waiting until the world changes back, awaiting a new year of life reborn.