I notice a difference in the way the sunlight slants through the windows. It washes my chair in warmth drawing me to sit. A bloom on my Mother’s day rose stands out against the dark branches of the crab apple clustered with deep mahogany orbs. This is a picture I see out my window in fall, yet fall is not quite welcome. I want to continue to feel warmth and a light breeze on my bare skin. The added dimension of outer layers to our morning routine is also not appealing, as we just barely get out the door on time as it is. The crickets and grasshoppers do not lie though. Heading out to the garden grasshoppers fly up like little firecrackers at my feet. Their time in the world is not long and I am reminded of the children’s story, Hickory, where Hickory the house mouse, leaves the comfort of his farmhouse family for the big broad world of the fields and befriends a grasshopper. He learns a difficult lesson in cycles of life and the loss of a friend. The other story I am reminded of as I hear the song of the cricket coming from strange corners of my home, is A Pocketful of Cricket. It is the end of summer and a little boy, Jay, is headed to school for the first time with a pet cricket in his pocket. The story follows the flow of a boy’s summer day in the natural wold and then off he goes to school for the first time. I think of my little boy headed off to kindergarten perpetually throwing himself to the ground to catch a hopping insect.
In the garden there is evidence of a window of time and some effort on my part at the end of July when I planted the fall garden. I scarcely remember, but there is a beautiful bed of mesclun mix, black seeded simpson lettuce, arugula, radishes, and broccoli rabe. Late in the season the slugs are too cold or lazy to find my tender greens and the flea beetles have moved on to better times. There are some beets and carrots and a bed of dragon’s tongue beans that may need a little cheering on if they are to get big enough to eat before frost descends (the forecast has threatened this weekend). There are some snow peas that are almost ready and black storage radishes bigger than my fist. Planting a fall garden in mid summer is a challenge for me with all of the other demands of the garden at that time and limited space, but with such a long winter, extending our growing season is important and I am reaping the rewards of that foresight now, with plans for doing it even better next year.
Elsewhere in the garden I am mulching, harvesting, picking the last baskets of flowers, and composting. I have too much fresh green material- leftovers from the kitchen, and not enough dead brown for the ComposTumbler. So I have been shredding newspaper to add. There is something strangely satisfying in reading the news, taking that knowledge for better or worse and giving it back to the earth- all those composted words. As I think about putting the garden to bed, greens and radishes flourish in the cooler air and I hope for a few more warm sunny days.
