The Birthday Spread

The weekly garbage pickup is tomorrow morning, so that means full cans are hauled to the curb this evening. I was out at about 10 doing so, under a mostly clear sky, temps about 40 F, which didn’t feel too cold after the last few days of subfreezing air.

There he was, off in the southeast corner of the sky: Orion. That’s my own moment, every year for many years now, when I decide that winter has started. The landscape below Orion certainly fits the part. All the trees are bare and the grass has gone dormant.

Lilly had her eighth birthday over the weekend, with festivities: presents, cake, little friends to help her celebrate. Her birthdays will always be at the end of fall, just ahead of Thanksgiving, unless she takes a notion to move to somewhere along the equator or down under. My birthdays are always at the first flush of summer, and Yuriko’s are always at summer’s end, in the slow change into fall. If Ann spends her birthdays in the North Hemisphere, she’ll celebrate (or ignore) them in the coldest period of the year. We’ve got birthday variety as a family.