November always speaks to me of Remembrance Day (Canada) and/or Veteran's Day (US)

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Here is a link that might be useful: In Flanders Fields

All my life, I've paused at the street corners where ladies were accepting donations in exchange for a paper red poppy. Later in life, I developed a friendship with a woman my age whose birthday was November 11th. She always had parades and such on her birthday, and I was compelled to change MY birthday celebration to July 4th so I could have parades, fireworks, and picnics as well. It was only a week later than the real birthday, and I always felt I should have been born then anyway. I was from the start in a big hurry to be about LIFE.

My real life heroine was my maternal grandmother, born on November 22, 1884. She passed away July 1983 after suffering an anuerism in her neck, and was close to making it 100 years.

I like November up in Massachusetts. This year I took a few photos of the leaves, which seem to linger despite high winds. Not professional quality, but nice.

and the blueberry bushes turning brilliant red

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,�"
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me�"
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads�"you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Oh, I love the photos. You have a wonderful place and surroundings. Thanks for posting...now I want to see the inside.

Well, it's happened. We've had about 6 inches of snow overnight and it's still coming down. Not so fun to drive in, but very fun to watch the pups in!

Yup too much snow! It sure stacked up on top of the recycling bin lids. I have been out shoveling. At least for the most part it's quite light as it's so cold!

I scraped the snow off of one of the barrels to give some perspective on how deep it is.