Be-laboring Labor Day?

I hope everyone is enjoying a safe, healthy, relaxing holiday weekend. My participation in celebrating labor day weekend took advantage of this morning's drop in temperatures and dew points to start to get caught on outdoor chores that had been deferred for much of the Summer. While putzing about outside, I noticed that, so far this year, there's no indication we'll get anywhere near as many acorns dropping as we did last year.

acorn mast drop mid-September 2019

Photo by J. Harrington

After what seemed to be an early start, color changes in the leaves seems to have been suspended. There's been no indication of color change in the oaks or maples in our neighborhood. Maybe next week, along with the roadside asters coming into flower?

roadside sky-blue asters, 2nd week of September

Photo by J. Harrington

Having been raised with the caution that letting leaves stay where they fall will kill the grass, we're still looking for good guidance on mulching fallen leaves, thereby enriching the soil in our sand plain parcel, versus raking. What once was grass in the East side front yard is now mostly violets with some creeping charlie and wild strawberries thrown in. On the North side, there's so much shade we doubt grass would make much progress and we haven't yet figured out what kind of shade tolerant ground cover is also leaf tolerant. Country living certainly can keep us from getting bored.

The Flower Press

By Chelsea Woodard

It was the sort of thing given to little girls: 

sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light.

I stalked the pasture’s rough and waist-high grass

for worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass, 

the star shaming the clouds of slighter, 

ordinary blooms. The asters curled 

inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushed

in the parlor’s stifling heat, I pried 

each shrinking petal back, and turned the screws. 

But flowers bear no ugly bruise, 

and even now fall from the brittle page, dried 

prettily, plucked from memory’s hush.

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