August: asters and apples and Autumn

Today's winds are out of the northwest, a sign of seasonal transition. The local extended weather forecast has daily high temperatures ranging from the upper 60s to the mid 70s. The Minnesota State Fair starts Thursday. Soon Summer vacation will be over. State Fair, Redfree and Zestar apples should be ripe. Cooler weather will be more conducive to pulling more buckthorn. By Spring next year we expect to have a better idea of what gets planted to take its place. (In case you're keeping track, hummingbirds are still visiting the feeder.)

August through Autumn are aster time

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year, about this time or a little later, we planted some asters that were, subsequently and inadvertently, dug up by someone who thought they were annuals. It's time to decide where this year's asters will get planted and make up some signs to protect them. Since we have rabbits and other critters that might find asters succulent, we doubt the signs will be total protection.

Fallen Apples

Tom Hansen

Wasps at work in the soft
flesh of rotting apples.
Food of the gods,
all day they mine it in busy
hushed movements.

I pick up a mushy corpse
one cold morning.
Carefully turn it over.
Its congregation tumbles
into the cupped
bowl of my hand.

Dazed, drunk, still
chilled from overnight cold,
they blunder like sleepwalkers
feeling around for the light.
Tiny antennae test my skin
in search of something
now gone.

Warmed by my hand,
warmed by the sun,
they stagger and fall into flight.
They scribble orbits
the air erases
and whine at last out of sight.

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