Finally the close has come to a really crazy year. Not much to write about as I have been busy with Christmas and other things. But I thought it would be worth looking at the pictures from this past year.
January, the earliest I’ve seen a robin.
February, an attempt at making home-made saltine crackers.
Results of the second try at home-make saltines
March, volatile weather to say the least. Going from this…
….to this a few days later….
Just an FYI, the snowdrops did recover nicely once the snow melted off.
April, warm weather did bring some fresh greenery and early flowers.
May, Memorial Day brought the usual parade.
June produced a surprise hatching of baby spiders.
July burst with a profusion of flowers.
August produced more flowers.
In September came a cornucopia of acorns, much to the delight of squirrels, chipmunks, birds and deer.
October, of course, brought out the Halloween decorations.
November gave us the first hints of winter to come in the form of hoarfrost.
December is coming to a close with Christmas on the 25th and an ice storm today on the 29th which left a quarter inch of ice on everything, bringing down some tree branches.
Here’s hoping the coming year will be quiet and uneventful.
Our first light frost happened in early October and hard frost in mid-October. We’ve gotten some light snow in November though, so far, it’s melted soon after it falls. While it’s been a bit colder than usual, it’s not out of the norm for northern New Hampshire.
While I’m sorry to see the frost take its toll on the few green plants still lingering, frost itself can be a source of surprising beauty. Hoarfrost is very striking to see. It forms when the air is moist enough and temperatures are below freezing. Moisture will condense directly onto any surface area, creating tiny thorn like spikes during calm conditions unlike rime ice which is rougher in shape and forms under windy conditions such as the summit of Mount Washington.
Hoarfrost has a more dainty appearance, turning bare branches or brown weeds into glittering sculptures.
I had some recently when a heavy fog settled in overnight and the temperatures fell under 32 Fahrenheit. It left the spent vegetation with a frosty facelift.
Bare stems turned into prickly wands, as in the pictures above.
Withered leaves developed a punk-style hair-do.
Old bee-balm flower stalks got a make-over.
Even the lavender plants in my garden sprouted their own tiny spikes.
It all melted away once the sun got high enough but while it lasted, it made for a lovely show, a final hurrah in the fall season before the snow seriously starts to fly.
Halloween has rolled around again. The weather for this Friday looks to be a bit damp and distinctly raw. Not sure if that will cut down on the trick-or-treaters but I have a bag of candy ready. As always I try to pick out candy I like so I won’t be stuck with a dish of candy that I can’t bring myself to eat.
Leaf raking has begun in earnest. I rake the old fashioned way, preferring to eschew the ungodly banshee howl of one of those leaf-blowers in favor of the much quieter lawn rake. The aerobic workout that goes along with hand raking is a big plus as well.
Of course, Halloween decorations have gone up around town. Many are tasteful and low-key such as the ones below.
Inflatable figures seem popular, ranging from enormous witches and ghosts to smaller ones such as the charming little cat-ghost below.
Spider webs seem to be making an appearance, complete with spiders.
And where would we be without everybody’s favorite, the skeleton?
This last fellow seems to be losing his britches just a bit. I suspect a pair of suspenders is in order. Nice to see people expressing a bit of creativity with some cheerfully ghoulish lawn décor.
We finally received some decent rainfall this past week; ½ of rain on Tuesday 23 and 1 ½ inch on Thursday 25, finally relieving the bone dry conditions which have been ongoing since early August. Except for a paltry half inch in the last week in August, there has literally been no rain at all. A picture I took of a passing monarch butterfly recently shows the brown grass afflicting everyone’s lawns.
Only the toughest weeds stayed green. A dish of water I put out drew a steady stream of wasps and yellow jackets, so many in fact that birds stayed away from the bowl. Daily waterings of my garden kept that going but even trees seemed to show the pinch.
Even so, many oak trees produced huge numbers of acorns, making it necessary to sweep out the driveway over four times as acorns and their caps fell in a steady rain I could hear pretty much everywhere while out on my morning walks.
Squirrels and other acorn lovers will be feasting and hoarding well this fall.
Lastly, the change in foliage color is now underway, with bright yellows and oranges beginning to flare though it will probably be at least a week before we reach peak foliage here in northern New Hampshire.
Greek mythology bursts with all sorts of amazing beings; gods, sorcerers, gorgons, sirens, sea monsters and so forth. One such being is Talos, often referred to as the bronze giant.
Thanks to Ray Harryhausen, a Hollywood stop-action animator, the usual view of Talos is as an enormous metal statue come to life, often viewed erroneously as a robot.
Talos’s true nature depends on which Greek legends you read. Far from being a nation-state as it is now, Greece was a diverse collection of kingdoms, called poleis, small city-states which shared a common ethnic heritage but were not united, each having its own rulers as well as iteration of gods, spirits and the afterlife.
Talos was often described as a man of bronze set by the gods to guard Crete from invasion or attacks by pirates. Some tales have him as being forged by the smith-god Hephaestus in His divine furnaces as a statue, not a mechanism then brought mystically to life to serve as Crete’s guardian. The living statue would run three times around the island as part of his duties, throwing huge boulders at trouble makers. Popular views show him as a giant, though legends give no clear indication of his actual size.
But other versions of the myth state that Talos was a living being who was a survivor of the Age of Bronze. Ancient Greeks saw history as a cycle of ages, slowing declining with each subsequent age until the cycle bottoms out with the Age of Iron, which is the one we currently live in.
The Age of Gold was the first age, ruled over by Cronus the Titan. It was a time of peace and abundance. The earth provided food without humans having to struggle obtaining it. Hardship of any kind was unknown. Spring was eternal. People lived long healthy lifespans, free of sickness and pain, dying peacefully in their sleep.
Prometheus bringing fire to mortals was alleged to have brought an end to the Age of Gold, leading to the Age of Silver. With the Silver Age, seasons such as summer, winter, and fall came into existence. Humans needed to plant crops and build shelters. Their lifespans, while still long, was shorter than in the Golden Age. Battle among them began appearing. Evidently the god Zeus decided they weren’t honoring Him enough, so He brought an end to them, leading to the Age of Bronze.
In the Age of Bronze, humans were still powerful, but violent and warlike. It was said they were created from ash trees and their appearance was described as brazen, meaning they were metallic or bronze. These beings began building cities, their homes and weapons made of bronze as they themselves were. Talos was said to have a single vein running through his body filled with ichor, a divine form of blood, his only vulnerable point being his ankle which had either a thin membrane of flesh or a bronze nail. The Age of Bronze came to an end when the bronze humans destroyed themselves in a violent cataclysm or, in another version, a vast flood wiped them out. In this latter ending, two humans, Deucalion and his wife Pyrra threw stones over their shoulders, creating a new race of humans.
It’s not clear how Talos himself survived the end of the Age of Bronze into the following Age of Heroes but he was given as a gift either to Europa, a lover of Zeus, or to King Minos the ruler of Crete (again depending on which version of the myth you read). His demise came when Medea, a sorceress, managed to trick him into allowing the nail in his ankle to be removed, causing him to bleed to death.
There’s no account given of what became of his remains. As a living statue, once the life which the god Hephaestus gave him bled out, he would have reverted to mere bronze, presumably getting melted down by locals, a humiliating end for such an awesome creation. On the other hand, if he was a survivor of the Age of Bronze, one wonders if his brazen flesh would have rotted or been palatable for scavengers. A mournful prospect either way.
Now, according to Hesiod, we live in the final age, the Age of Iron, a time of sorrow, cruelty and desolation, where infants are born with gray hair, lies are considered ethical and the gods disrespected, all caused by human venality and corruption. It can certainly seem that way to us, with the endless barrage of evil news from TV newsfeeds, podcasts and YouTube videos hysterically declaring the end is upon us.
But honestly, I find it hard to think that way when I see a beautiful sunset with the setting sun coloring the clouds lavender and gold, a bald eagle flying in the distance, a slender fox galloping through my backyard in search of a meal or those infant spiders that I saw a few months ago congregating on a foxglove plant, preparing to launch themselves into the air, searching for a new life.
