"November Always Seemed To Me The Norway Of The Year,"

wrote Emily Dickinson, "The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner and Gibraltar lights make the village foreign."

Some of my November or approaching-November encounters:  

(How's this for a grille?)

Some would blow or rake leaves off the yard while others wash barnacles from the East Bay shoreline (of Budd Inlet at Percival Landing in Olympia.)

Tornados in Western Washington? A couple within a week of each other.

I have no frame of reference for Ms. Dickinson's description of November in this part of the world, especially this year.  Nothing laconic about this noon with a storm brewing and getting ready to snap some of those trees in half.  (I'm more informed this year than I was last year when a load of branches fell onto my car in this parking lot at work.)

Stern?  Austere?

Maybe somewhere, but not here!

I don't really know what she means by "Norway of the year."  No, I  mean I really don't know what she means by that.