For your listening pleasure, the sounds of Fall in Knik...

From Mushrooms to Berries, Alaska has it ALL!     

Photos by DeNise Woodbury

Author of

'Cottongrass Lodge' & 'Avery's Gift'

http://www.dwoodbury.com

THANKSGIVING

Forgive me for standing on my soapbox, but Thanksgiving is the most important holiday of the year.

Now, don’t get all weird on me - I’m not discounting the other important days. Your birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, there are others. But, Thanksgiving is important.

Friends, Black Friday is not a holiday!
Cyber Monday is not a holiday.

 

Counting the shopping days until Christmas is not the way to celebrate the love, joy and GIVING THANKS for the season.

This year, we moved directly from school clothes and Halloween to Christmas tree lights, fuzzy blinking sweaters and fudge.

Thanksgiving is the day I look forward to all year. To give thanks for the fact that I won the life lotto. I have electricity and the wherewithal to have a computer. My little home is warm and dry and filled with everything I could ever need. I have an abundance of food to share with friends. It would be with family except they’re too far away, but my telephone works, and I have the technology to let my grandson shoot me with his nurf-ball gun. We laugh. Life is good.

There is something so terribly wrong with shopping on Thanksgiving. For forcing the clerks to forgo turkey with grandma to be at work at some ungodly hour so Uncle George can get fifty dollars off the latest game of the year.
Really?

I remember a little adage, What if they gave a war and nobody showed up, remember that one? Well, what if they had a sale and nobody came? Take a stand - don’t go shopping until it’s time to go shopping. I promise I won’t get on the reason-for-the-season Christmas soap-box.

But, I’m here to remind us all that Thanksgiving is the day. The one day we slow down, consider the traditions of the day, and give thanks for the life we have built for ourselves.

Sometimes, buying brown ‘n serve is just as good as the time it took to make homemade, because sitting on the sofa with Aunt Harriet, this year, may be your last chance to ask her how she made cranberry sauce.

Life is precious and short and Thanksgiving is only one day. Stay home or spend it with friends, eat too much, laugh until your sides hurt, cheer you favorite football team, pass around the newest family baby, drive slow, be safe and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I love you all,

--- DeNise

Glorious Alaska

It has been said: To all things there is a season. Alaska took that adage to the extreme.

From October until May the reality is cold and dark and glorious.

Then the light begins to come back. Give or take that allows Alaska four months of the other extreme. Summer. The Magnificent Anxiety.
 
Every endeavor is predicated on the reality that WINTER IS COMING!

People work and play until exhaustion drops them in a heap. They fish and hike and climb and hunt and garden and did I mention fish? They can and smoke and share and all the while they are outside they are surrounded by Alaska. Alaskan flora and fauna doing the very same exhaustive struggle to prepare for winter and those that pay attention can tell you what part of the summer you are in by what is blooming.

The riotous season begins with green-green anything. The fireweed shoots climb out of the ground before the snow is gone. Alaskan daffodils [dandelions anyplace else] spread joy and brilliance along the roadsides.

Mother’s Day, more or less, suddenly, there are leaves. I’m not kidding - over a three day period fat buds explode shielding all debris from sight. The understory begins to leaf out and bloom-Current and serviceberry and cranberry and Labrador Tea.
 

Ahh, June, the first week star flowers sprinkle like fairy dust through the woods. The second week the Prickly Roses begin and by then the Lupine has started. As the month progresses Chiming Bells and Geraniums take over and the last week Iris rule. At your feet a blanket of twin flowers flow over the sides of the lane.

July, the fireweed is five feet tall and pink spires proclaim summer is half over. Potentilla and Yarrow are everywhere. 

August-oh dear. Mushroom month. The green understory in the woods turns red and yellow.

Rain begins and the fireweed has started to seed. We call it getting fuzzy. When the fuzzies get to the top of the fireweed –snow is two weeks away.
 
These are some of my passionate observations - your milage may vary. There are soooo many more. Don’t tell me I forgot the chocolate lily or the arnica or — I love summers flowers. Sadly, winter is coming.

--- DeNise Woodbury