A different September song.

The holiday weekend is over. The furnace tech visited this morning and said we’re good to go for the winter. We have two family birthdays coming up this month, autumn Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] shares begin next week, the Equinox occurs on the 22nd and World Rivers Day is the 25th. Those are the current, known, high points this month for us. I’ll see what I can do to sneak in some pleasant surprises between now and month’s end.

Brake for Snakes

Photo by J. Harrington

Female ruby-throated hummingbirds are still coming to the sugar water feeder. Yesterday and the day before we say a “baby” snake about six inches long in the woods on the south side of the house. I think it was a hog-nose snake but wouldn’t want to have to swear to that in court. As I recall, that’s the only (live) snake we’ve seen all spring and summer, but we haven’t been walking the property much so that’s not surprising. Since the township paved the gravel road, it’s been more hazardous for reptiles to warm themselves on the roadway. We did see a couple of snake corpses last spring. It would be nice if the county and township would put up some snake crossing signs to go with the turtle crossing signs already in place, although we could use a few more of the latter, also. Isn’t this about the time of year when little turtles hatch and head for the ponds? It was the end of August a couple of years ago that I rescued a baby snapper from the road, parked him or her in the birdbath overnight and released the critter the next day in the pond up the road.

turtle crossing

Photo by J. Harrington

(Today's title refers to this.)

SEPTEMBER

by: Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

HE golden-rod is yellow;

The corn is turning brown;

The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down.

 

The gentian's bluest fringes

Are curling in the sun;

In dusty pods the milkweed

Its hidden silk has spun.

 

The sedges flaunt their harvest,

In every meadow nook;

And asters by the brook-side

Make asters in the brook.

 

From dewy lanes at morning

The grapes' sweet odors rise;

At noon the roads all flutter

With yellow butterflies.

 

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer's best of weather,

And autumn's best of cheer.

 

But none of all this beauty

Which floods the earth and air

Is unto me the secret

Which makes September fair.

 

'T is a thing which I remember;

To name it thrills me yet:

One day of one September

I never can forget.

"September" is reprinted from Poems. Helen Jackson. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

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