It's curtains until spring

Today is a blowy day in the hill country. The sky is leaden, heavy with clouds. The wind whistles around the potting shed's corners. It's swept the porch clean, saving me the trouble. It carries David's and Chris's voices, up the hill from where they are working on David's house, the whinny of a horse, the cry of the hawk that's circling, riding the thermals, likely hunting, too. A front is predicted to move through in the next day or so, bringing rain and the colder breath of real fall. Somehow, out here, I feel it more than I did when I lived farther south. It's as if the wind is giving me notice to prepare, to brace myself.

Curtains.

The wind has made me think of curtains. I've left the windows of my little garden shed bare on purpose, open to the expanse of sky, the sweeping, tree-softened landscape ... a distant ridge of hills. While the weather was warm, I didn't mind it when night fell black against the windows. It was a thrill to look out and wonder at the moon sailing high amid the scattered luster of stars, so many stars. But now, somehow with winter coming on, I have ... not a wish, exactly, more like an instinct to cover the glass, closing out the wind and the night that falls so early. Even to see the cold face of the moon is not so compelling as the desire to feel tucked in, warm and snug. How it is that a wisp of fabric accomplishes all of that is beyond me, but it does. Curtains. In winter, its curtains ... until spring, I think....