The featured photo of this post goes back to 2004 or 2005. You see, my memory falters after about 2003 or so. I can remember what happened in November of 1989 better than I can remember what happened in November of 2013. It’s a sad reality of the aging process (appended by my new bifocals.) Back in 2004 (or 2005) I crouched in the backyard as the sun went down, and waxed all contemplative.

A single strand of bamboo rises on the right side of the photo, while dried miscanthus, already devastated by the frosts and the winds of late fall, backs the middle and left. A wooden fence, bright and relatively new at the time, lends a bit of structure to the goings-on. It’s been about a decade since this was taken, and I’m not sure which has aged worse – myself or that fence – both are pretty worn. Yet still we stand, season after season, struggling with the rough days, basking in the good ones, and meeting in a mostly happy and fortunate middle.

Today I look out the window and study that wooden fence, as one might study the lines in their face, or the gray in their hair. The wood is lined with water stains, gray with age, and haggard with edges torn by the claws of scurrying squirrels, yet it’s a testament to the test of time. Eventually, it will fall – all things do – but another will rise in its stead. Good fences make good neighbors, someone once wrote, and we all could stand a couple of boundaries in our lives. The biggest one I’ve found is time, and no one ever surmounts it.

It was the lone light in the night. A single spot of warmth. We hovered around it, pressing close, shaking and holding out mittened hands over its heat. Behind us the darkness nudged us closer. The cold kept us together. Together they corralled us around the fire, where we made a friendly circle of flushed faces and sparkling eyes, fire dancing in pairs of irises.

I watch the heart of the fire go blue. I don’t know if it’s a trick of watching the firelight for too long, or if it’s really happening, and I don’t care – I just like the way it looks. A hypnotic and mesmerizing effect, it entrances the senses, and though the iciness laps at our backs and lassoes our feet, we stand there listening to the crackling of the wood, the dogged rush of the wind, the muffled laughter through scarves. This is how we get through fall.

Winter will be another story.

Following this weekend in Boston, I have about 80% of my holiday shopping done. Only about 30% of that shopping was for me, so put that in your holiday spirit pipe and suck it down. In honor of that, I’m posting this hilarious and touching video of a little girl demonstrating her new Flutterbye Fairy. God knows I love a good fairy post, and if you watch this I’ll bet you will too.

Tis the season!

Bring in the Yule Log!

Stoke the fire!

(And if you’re looking for gift ideas for moi, check out my newly-updated list on Amazon. Not for the faint of heart or light of pocketbook.)

The rain came, cold like it does in the month of November, but there was hardly time to complain about it. There was a shift in the atmosphere, and those throwback days where summer echoed in the sun seem to have disappeared for good this year. Now we wait until they return. It’s dark when I get up in the morning, and dark when get out of work at the afternoon, and none of that makes me very happy. My friend JoAnn was lamenting that, and somewhere in me I found the hope to say, ‘We will make our own light.” So that’s what I’m going to try to do.

Before it got too dark, however, JoAnn threw her annual Fall Party, and it was by all accounts a smash.

November 14 marked StandUp Day, a day honored by Ben Cohen and his StandUp Foundation in a effort to stop bullying and homophobia. A great cause deserves a great front-guy, and Mr. Cohen is certainly that.

Setting up his own warm front was Tom Brady, in a few rare shirtless shots.

As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again. After all, tomorrow is another day.

The mightiest oak began as an acorn.

This is a big reason why I need to get back to Boston more.

There is such a thing as a thirty-year-old Virgin.

There was also the time when Madonna was Evita.

The Hunks of November did their work by keeping things hot here, so a big round of thanks goes out to Scott Cullens, Louis Virtel, Olly Murs, Nacer Chadli, Diego Furoni, Christos Birbas and Christopher Marchant.

It takes a certain amount of observation to notice all the small things that go on around us. I’ve tended to be much better at it in the past than I am now. Life has a way of getting in the way of such nuanced observation, as proven by these photographs. When they were taken, I was simply trying to capture a few acorns in the afternoon sunlight. I was entranced by the color and the shine of their shells, and the way their chestnut brown shading was set off by the green bed of moss on which they rested.

It wasn’t until I pulled them for this post that I noticed that they were sprouting. A moist and warm fall had triggered their germination. Split, the acorns spilled their life, unsuspecting of the winter to come. Yet here is where the mighty and majestic oak tree originates. Most of them won’t make it – and that’s ok: think of the thousands of oak trees the world would have if each acorn grew up. A few will, though, and they may stand when I am long gone. At that point maybe someone else will find the next generation coming up on a fall day, and take a picture, and think about their moment in time.