All Saints' Weekend

 

On Friday (All Saints' Eve) it was still too windy in my opinion to find it worth while to go and make any attempt to light candles in the cemetery. So I put that off until Saturday afternoon; which was calm and sunny, but almost wintry cold. 

Not a lot of leaves left on the trees after the stormy days earlier in the week - but in some places, the sun did its best to highlight what was still there.

In the background behind those golden leaves above is the cemetery chapel - which is also kept open on this day, so that people can go inside and light candles, or search for names in the registry book (of people who had their ashes scattered in the memorial grove outside), or just sit and meditate for a while.

 

 

Family grave from my mum's side of the family (her grandparents). Someone had already lit two candles there - probably the day before, as both of them had obviously got blown out by the wind very soon after being lit... I lit those again, and added two of my own. 

 

(Today I passed by there again, and then all four candles had burned half way down but had then been extinguised by wind or rain. I lit them again and hopefully they burned for a few hours more.)

At home, I struggled to wrap my balcony bench "properly" (legs and all) in its winter covering (a plastic tarpaulin); and put it back out again, with the strawberry box hibernating underneath, inside the "tent"... 

 

 It has worked every winter before, so hopefully it will work again. (I'll be keeping an extra eye on it if we get more storm warnings, though...)

Another Windy Day

 

Quite strong winds today as well, but in the afternoon the clouds were breaking up, and around 4 pm I took this photo from my balcony. (The clouds still moving rather fast across the sky, from the west towards the east.) Before that, I had been out for my usual Friday recycling walk (i.e. taking a bag of packaging material etc to the nearest recycling station for that kind of stuff). Although the wind had died down a bit compared to yesterday, I still had to hold my bag in a firm grip on the way there ;) On the way back I also popped into the small neighbourhood greengrocer's shop for a few things. All-in-all I was only out for perhaps 20 minutes, but that felt like enough today. 

Skywatch Friday

 

Spooky Weather

It's Halloween, and here Nature is up to some spooky tricks of its own tonight - like moving/turning over dust-bins on wheels outdoors, and rattling the balconies on my building, making scary noises. And most likely worse, elsewhere...!

Earlier in the afternoon, as I was sitting in my chair in the living room, watching TV, there was some sudden very unusual kind of noise from outside, which made me jump up and look out of my windows. This was the sight that met me:

Photo taken from my balcony door. That bench has its normal place against the wall below the window to the left of that door... Now a gust of wind from the west had lifted it up and  blown it across the balcony floor, banging into the railing in the opposite corner! (I've lived here 16 years, the bench has always been in the same place, all year round, and this has never happened before...)

Checking the weather app on my phone I saw that warnings for strong gusts of wind had been issued for tonight and a day or two onward, with recommendations to secure things like garden furniture etc outdoors. So I ended up taking the bench inside, and the box of strawberry plants still hanging on the railing as well. Normally the box of strawberries hibernates all winter under the bench. I think what caused the situation now was probably that so far this autumn I had just covered the top of the bench provisionally (obviously just making it more tempting for the wind to play with, rather than serving as protection...)

I think I'll have to await a calmer day to decide if I can recreate my usual winter arrangement or if I'd better just take the bench down to the basement storage room this year. (There are some problems with that as well, though.)

While dealing with this rather minor "incident", inside my head I had images from all the recent much worse weather situations around the world: The hurricanes in Florida, where I have at least one blogging friend (Sandra) still dealing with the aftermaths. The flooding in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where other friends had their house severly flooded. They lost most of their furniture and other belongings. Similar situations now on the east coast of Spain, from what I've seen on TV. And via Facebook I've learned that "Typhoon Kong-rey, the biggest typhoon to directly hit Taiwan in nearly 30 years, has made landfall on the island's eastern coast" (where I also have friends living).

Here, I still have power, so am going to turn my TV on now and check what of all this (and more) that's currently considered worth mentioning in my corner of the world.

Illusion

 

In my previous post, I showed a photo of this winter decoration on what in spring and summer is a flower bed (in the cemetery where I often walk). Sandra asked if the trees were planted or potted, and I replied "neither". They're just a very clever illusion, created by branches stuck into the ground:

 

"Fall Leaves Us in Awe"

Still some autumn colours to be seen in nature, this last week of October - in spite of rather wet, grey and foggy weather. The photos below were taken during a walk into town and back yesterday, along the river.

 

And in the cemetery, the gardeners are being quite creative with the winter coverings of the public flower beds.

 

We don't see all that much of the British/American kind of Halloween celebrations with spooky garden decorations and kids going trick-or-treat-ing around here; but it's very common to light candles and put winter decorations on the graves of one's ancestors, for what we call All Saints' Weekend (Allhelgona). (In church: All Saints' Day on Saturday, and All Souls' Day on Sunday.)

 “Fall leaves us in awe with its colorful magic!” (Unknown)

 “As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas, and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.” – Vincent Van Gogh