Moving toward autumn moods and modes

Each week the trip to pick up our community supported agriculture [CSA] share box takes us past the ridges near Wild River State Park. Effective today, the leaf color there is past peak. We’re just about 15 or so miles west of the park and near here it looks like we haven’t yet hit 50% color. The photo below was taken on October 9 last year and it doesn’t look to us like it’s anywhere near peak. If the weather cooperates, we’ll bring a camera this Thursday afternoon and see if we can capture the colors on the same ridge about 53 weeks apart.

wooded ridges near Wild River State Park

Photo by J. Harrington

Our cooler weather now feels a bit more autumnal, but the extended spell of warmer than normal weather has hindered settling into a typical fall feeling. We’ve managed to get overheated almost every time we’ve worn a chamois or wool shirt. Perhaps the lack of sightings of woolly bear caterpillars is also a contributing factor to our unseasonal mood. Plus, we haven’t really begun to tackle autumn leaf management yet. Some day soon we need to clamber onto the garage roof to clear the branches and leaves and clean the gutters before the onset of snow season, but not during tomorrow’s rain.

The Better Half just finished baking oatmeal-apple cookies (or maybe they’re apple-oatmeal), one of my favorite favorites, so that helps shift the mood from summer to autumn. We caught a cricket on the downstairs carpet this morning (and subsequently turned it loose far from the front door), another sign of seasonal change. (We’re not sure if it’s the same one we heard chirping in the living room yesterday.) This upcoming weekend the leaf-covered back yard should have dried out enough to make it worthwhile to mulch / mow, perhaps for the last, or the penultimate time, this year?

Lightness in Autumn

By Robert Fitzgerald

The rake is like a wand or fan,   

With bamboo springing in a span   

To catch the leaves that I amass   

In bushels on the evening grass.

I reckon how the wind behaves   

And rake them lightly into waves   

And rake the waves upon a pile,   

Then stop my raking for a while.

The sun is down, the air is blue,   

And soon the fingers will be, too,   

But there are children to appease   

With ducking in those leafy seas.

So loudly rummaging their bed

On the dry billows of the dead,

They are not warned at four and three   

Of natural mortality.

Before their supper they require   

A dragon field of yellow fire

To light and toast them in the gloom.   

So much for old earth’s ashen doom.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.