Winter Is Coming. Yay!

[poliphilo]

Winter is coming and I feel the need to make provision for it- squirrel up nuts, if you see what I mean. It's an atavistic urge- I live in the all-providing urban west and nothing is going to run out- but still, there it is, impossible to shrug off, and with it comes a not unpleasant sense of excitement- gotta get busy, busy, busy. I fall in with it by setting myself a roster of little tasks to be finished by next spring: paint the house, recast and finish the novel- things like that.

What I like best about winter are the winter stars. Orion is going to be striding up the evening sky again with Sirius at his heels. I'm going to see Aldebaran and the Pleiades.

Hurry back, old friends!

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

What I like best about winter are the winter stars. Orion is going to be striding up the evening sky again with Sirius at his heels. I'm going to see Aldebaran and the Pleiades.


How lucky you are not to be hindered by the Bane of Astronomers, street lighting. Where I live, we have those awful, depressing sulphur lights that cast an evil orange glow against the sky.

In my last house, in a nearby town, there were no streetlights near my house, and the Big Dipper was perfectly framed in my bedroom window.

At least the nearest streetlight here is well down the hill, so it doesn't shine into my window, but it keeps the night sky away.

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I'm glad winter's coming. I love the intensity of fall and winter, the changing weather conditions, the equinoctal storms and dark days.

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[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We have a street light out front. I can't do much star-gazing there. But if I step out back, into our tiny yard- or into the alleyway behind it- I can see the major constellations.

But we live on the edge of a major city and there's nowhere nearby that's entirely free from light pollution.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I don't like winter when I'm far away from home. We have a fire there and it makes it seem so much nicer!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A proper open fire? Coal or wood? I haven't had one of those since I was a child.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Coal but we use wood as well...

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

One of the things that caught me most by surprise when I visited New Zealand was seeing the great hunter of winter hanging in the sky "upside down". :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Gosh yes....

One of the things I'm frustrated about is that- unless my son moves to Australia (as he has hinted he might)- I'm never going to see the Southern Cross.