Indian Summer

October arrived last week and brought with it a spell of beautiful Indian Summer weather. We've had warm, sunny days, cool, but not cold nights, and no frost. We haven't lit the wood stove once so far this month. It is perfect weather, autumn at its very best.

Fall leaves at the Ulysses Cemetery.

The garden is getting flat now. Anything vertical is disappearing. There are no more trellises and poles. The tall plants, hollyhocks and sunflowers, are gone now. I've cut down their brown, dried stalks. I'll cut down the corn stalks and the peonies this week. Other things have disappeared as well. The robins are gone. The swallows and the blackbirds, too. I haven't seen a turkey vulture in a week. I miss all of them. The Japanese beetles have also vanished – at last. I don't miss them.

The hammock, soon to be put away for the winter.

A box of spring bulbs that I ordered arrived on Wednesday and I spent two days after school planting them – crocuses, tulips, and narcissus. I love planting bulbs knowing that in six months they will be beautiful flowers. The colchicum (autumn blooming crocus) that I planted a few weeks ago is blooming now. They are beautiful. I wish I had a hundred more of them. It is magical to see them emerge from the bare earth at a time when everything else is dying.

Autumn Blooming Crocus (colchicum)

The tiller threw a belt and I haven't fixed it yet, so all my tilling is on hold. I'm not good with machines. I use them, but I don't like working on them. I’d rather have manure on my hands than grease. So with my tilling interrupted, I haven't planted my garlic yet. I will have to do it this week, no matter what.

This is the time of year when I no longer mow the grass, I mow leaves. The grass isn't growing much now, but the lawn is always covered with leaves. I used to rake up the leaves and spread them in the woodland garden. It was a lot of work. Our six big maple trees drop a lot of leaves. Now I wait until the leaves are crisp and mow them – twice even three times a week. The mower grinds them into maple leaf confetti fine enough that I don't need to rake it up. It settles into the grass and rots into the soil. Last week I did rake some leaves into a pile in the fire pit and burned them. It’s a ritual I perform every year. I do it for the nostalgia evoked by the odor of leaf smoke. I love that smell.

I picked all the apples from my little apple trees last week. Most of them had only a few apples on them. We had a taste test to see which ones we liked the best. All my apple trees are heirloom varieties. Heirloom apples are not usually sold at grocery stores. Commercial growers won't grow them for various reasons – they don't ship well, bruise too easily, or they aren't the preferred colors, sizes, or shapes. That's unfortunate for the people who only eat apples from the grocery store. Heirlooms are the most interesting and delicious apples. When you taste heirloom apples, you realize that the marketers had to name Red Delicious apples "delicious" to try and make people believe they are just that. The grocery store Red Delicious, the most popular apple in America, tastes bland and mushy compared to heirloom varieties. Heirlooms are amazing in their various textures and tastes - from soft and sweet with overtones of strawberry (Chenango Strawberry), to crisp and complex with a hint of anise (Caville Blanc d'Hiver). The ones we tasted were Chenango Strawberry, Winter Banana, Snow, Roxbury Russet, Golden Russet, Black Gilliflower, Caville Blanc d'Hiver, Jonagold, Winesap, and Cox's Orange Pippin. The favorites were Golden Russet, Chenango Strawberry, and Snow, but the big winner was Jonagold. We have five buckets of apples sitting on the back porch and an entire huge tree full of Northern Spy apples waiting to be picked in a week or so. When all of it is harvested, we will take the ones we haven’t eaten already to the cider mill and have them pressed. I can hardly wait. I love fresh cider.

Heirloom apples (left to right): Winesap, Black Gilliflower, Roxbury Russet, Jonagold, GOlden Russet, Cox's Orange Pippin, and Snow.

Canning continues apace at our house. There are still a lot of tomatoes ripening on the back porch. Every few days we take the ripe ones and make sauce. Yesterday we began working on processing pumpkins. We quartered them three at a time and cooked them in the pressure cooker then scraped them out, mashed them, and froze the mash. We processed six and there are eleven more to do. These pumpkins are some of the nicest I've ever grown. They will make some great pies.

Yesterday afternoon we took a drive up to the Losey Overlook, which is in the Susquehannock State Forest in the lower end of Ulysses Township. It's a beautiful drive up a winding dirt road through the forest to the top of a ridge that overlooks a vast stretch of Pennsylvania stretching up into New York State. We went to see the trees, but realized right away that they are past their prime now. We had a bit of rain and wind toward the end of the week and that brought down most of the leaves. Even so, it was very pretty.

The road up to the overlook.

The view looking north from the Losey Overlook.

Yesterday was the high school homecoming dance. They didn't have dates but, inspired by Esther and Alonzo Smith in Meet Me In St. Louis, Hannah and Josiah went together. They had a fun time even though Josiah reported afterward that he doesn't think he likes dancing. After the dance they went to a party at the home of our friends, the Olneys. They got home at midnight. While Stacey and I were waiting up for them, it occurred to me again that these are our two youngest children in their last years at high school and it made me feel old and a little sad.

This weekend is General Conference and we've been watching the sessions over at the Shillig's house – three yesterday (two general sessions and the priesthood session) and we'll watch two more today. It’s been a wonderful conference. Every message has been inspiring and timely. General Conference weekends are very relaxing at our house, especially on Sunday. The sessions don’t start until noon, which gives us a quiet and slow paced morning. Between the sessions today, we’ll have lunch at the Shillig's. Julie has had a roast beef slow cooking since yesterday. Kurt dug up some of his potatoes to mash. Stacey made an apple pie. It’s going to be a good day.

Good Sabbath.