Autumn becomes palette-able

Our local trees are showing about 10% to 20% autumn colors, as is the situation in much of the state. Several of the local pumpkin patches were closed this morning, but one with enough sizes to meet my needs was open and had everything I was looking for except lower prices. My mother taught me, many, many, years ago, that “beggars can’t be choosers.” I needed 10 pumpkins, 2 largish, 2 mediumish, and 6 smallish (pie size). Once the 10 pumpkins were safely in a real shopping cart wagon, we remembered another mother-taught saying: “a fool and his gold are soon parted.” When I parted with my gold, I loaded the pumpkins into the back of the Jeep and headed north toward the home of the Daughter Person who had requested help assembling decorations for the house and a certain granddaughter’s first birthday party.

pumpkin field at a local farm

Photo by J. Harrington

Actually, shopping at Lendt’s Pumpkin Patch in nearby Wyoming was a pleasant experience, augmented by the pleasure of driving country roads through fields of corn and soy beans nearing harvest. Greens are diminishing. Tans and yellows and golden hues are becoming dominant, with accents of maroon and scarlet. At the risk of jinxing things, we’re pleased to report that, locally, autumn seems to be shaping up as one of the most normal aspects of the world at large these days. The levels of discontent seem to have reached a state in which, if everyone got their fondest wish, the air would be filled with complaints about how long it took to be granted. We’re overdue for spending less time watching screens while listening to screams of outrage from all points on the spectrum. Quite literally, the world would be a much better place if each and everyone of us would take a time out and take a hike! In fact, this is so important I may even take my own advice.

Poem Beginning with a Line from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Maggie Smith

Just look—nothing but sincerity 
as far as the eye can see—
the way the changed leaves,

flapping their yellow underbellies
in the wind, glitter. The tree
looks sequined wherever

the sun touches. Does anyone
not see it? Driving by a field
of spray-painted sheep, I think

the world is not all changed.
The air still ruffles wool
the way a mother’s hand

busies itself lovingly in the hair
of her small boy. The sun
lifts itself up, grows heavy

treading there, then lets itself
off the hook. Just look at it
leaving—the sky a tigereye

banded five kinds of gold
and bronze—and the sequin tree
shaking its spangles like a girl

on the high school drill team,
nothing but sincerity. It glitters
whether we’re looking or not.

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