Noting the Passage of the Last Things

A sunrise last week.

September is almost over and I’ve come to that time of the year when I note the passing of the Last Things. With the flowering of the colchicums and the autumn anemones, nothing new will begin in the flower garden now. This is the winding down time. Everything still alive is slowing down. There are fewer buds on the cosmos, carnations, and dahlias and the few there are, are smaller and seem more fragile. They are preparing to rest or expire. I cut the last gladiolus flowers. There were just three and they were as beautiful as the first ones I brought into the house in June. There are no more buds waiting to open now. I revel in every last remnant of color, the bright marigolds, the few straggling phlox flowers, the brilliant nasturtiums. Their days are numbered. On sunny days, I relish the warmth of the sun on my skin. Soon its strength will wane and will be too weak to warm me much. Seeing the garden decline is lovely and sad, like bidding farewell to a friend. But underlying the sadness, there is a low hum of hope and excitement. Yes, the garden is going, but as it goes, I’m already imagining and planning what it will be next year. The Fedco Tree catalog arrived on Monday and I’ve already read through it several times, compiling my wish list for next spring. That’s what I love most about gardening – there will always be another spring and summer and, for as long as I’m here to tend it, there will be flowers and fruit on this little piece of earth at Gold.

Colchicums close up.

Autumn anemones.

The last three glads.

The vegetable garden is almost finished too. There are just two rows of flint corn and some cabbages and broccoli left to harvest and they will stay until the cold settles in. No more tomatoes. All of the onions and most of the potatoes are out of the ground and curing for their winter storage. I brought in the last pumpkins and squash. I like the feeling of the empty vegetable garden. Looking over it all, I feel a sense of triumph. It blessed us with bounty that will feed us for a year. It needs to rest now and so do I.

A field of pumpkins up on Fox Hill.

Tuesday was a perfect late summer day – warm with big fluffy clouds in a cornflower blue sky and a soft breeze to freshen everything. I spent most of the day in the orchard with Kurt. Mowing the orchard is one of the Big Late Summer Projects. Usually I mow it with our trusty Cub Cadet, but it was in the shop, so I asked Kurt if he would mow it with his tractor. He was more than happy to do it. It took us several hours, him mowing and me walking around telling him where to mow and not to mow, pointing out where the old stumps and the little fruit trees are that are easy to overlook in the tall grass. Mowing the tall grass usually turns out to be a bigger adventure than expected and this time was no different. We rousted out lots of meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) that Kurt dispatched. They do a lot of damage to the fruit trees in the winter and I have no qualms about killing them. I had to rescue five wooly bear caterpillars and two toads from the oncoming mower blades. And we uncovered a ground nest of yellow jackets that caused a momentary halt to the mowing. But we finished the job and that’s a relief. At the end of the afternoon, as I stood there gazing over the shorn orchard, enjoying the fading beauty of the day, I had the feeling that we shall not look upon its like again for a long time.

The mowed orchard.

As usually happens in the fall, the mice are trying to move indoors for the winter. Because we live in a rural area and because we live in an old house, there are plenty of mice and plenty of ways for them to get into the house. The species we deal with here is not the common House Mouse (Mus musculus), but the pretty little White-footed Mouse (Peromyscus leucopus). Pretty or not, they are not welcome in the house. For the last week or two at night, we heard one running in the ceiling of our bedroom, which is on the ground floor. Then we found that it had discovered the closet upstairs where we store dry goods and had chewed into a bag of cocoa and a box of chocolate chips. Apparently it liked chocolate. We set a trap and killed it and we haven’t heard anymore scampering since. It does have a friend that we’ve spotted climbing on the upstairs bookshelves in the workroom, and there is another mouse in the kitchen that we haven’t caught yet. They seem especially wary of traps and avoid them no matter what bait we use. So our rodent war goes on and will continue all through the fall.

Meadow vole, House Mouse, White-footed Mouse.

It’s still dark for more than an hour when I get up now. On Wednesday morning the sky was clear and when I looked out the window, I saw Orion glowing low in the southwestern sky with the Pleiades to his left (my right) and the brilliant Dog Star rising behind him. It was chilly that morning, 43°, but the shiver that ran through me wasn’t because of that. It suddenly felt more like fall than before.

Orion.

Wednesday turned out to be another fine late summer day. As soon as the dew was gone, I went out to work. The forecast warned of rain due to arrive that night, so I spent the morning digging potatoes. I didn’t finish and will be working at it again all this week. It’s hard work turning the soil carefully with a garden fork, trying not to impale any of the potatoes. I always stab a few, which then become dinner. So far we’ve hauled in about half the crop. After we harvest and cure them, we will can some, freeze dry some, and store the rest down cellar.

The last day of summer.

It rained off and on all day on Thursday, the first day of fall. After it passed, the air was much cooler. Friday morning the thermometer was at 37° and it really felt like fall. Reluctantly, I brought the electric heater out of the closet and set it by my writing desk. This room is chilly in the mornings now and I have to turn it on for an hour while I do my morning writing. We still won’t light the furnace for a while. That would be conceding too much to the cold.

I had errands to run that day and as I drove around, I noticed a lot more color on the hills. My errands took me up to Wellsville, New York and back. I took some boxes of books to donate to the library. I went to the Tractor Supply and bought chicken feed. On my way back home, as I was driving through Yorks Corners, I saw a sign pointing east up Beech Hill Road that said Fresh Apples for Sale. It was a bit embarrassing and humbling to think of buying apples when I have over thirty trees in my orchard, but we won’t get enough apples from our trees this year to do anything and I couldn’t stand the thought of not making applesauce. I turned and followed the sign up Beech Hill Road, through beautiful countryside to a very nice Amish farm. They had bins of beautiful apples for sale. I bought three bushels, one each of Cortland, Crispin, and Gala. All this week I will be making applesauce. We eat a lot of it. It is one of life’s delights.

The farm where I bought apples.

Three bushels of apples.

It’s time to plant garlic, so on Friday afternoon I sat on the back porch stairs and peeled cloves to prepare them for planting. We grew some nice garlic this year and I saved out the very best of them to plant. I also ordered some new varieties, but they haven’t arrived yet. I hope to plant them this week after the rain stops.

Peeling garlic to plant.

The bed Kurt tilled for the garlic.

Friday’s forecast said the night would be clear and the temperature would drop even lower into the 30's. The weather service issued the first frost warning of the season. I wasn’t too concerned. There was nothing I could do to protect things in the garden and I didn’t really want to anyway. I did cover the morning glories because they haven’t bloomed yet and they have a lot of buds. I moved some of my potted plants into the back porch. I was ready to let everything else go. I need to start the fall cleanup.

When I got up on Saturday morning, the temperature was 34°. I thought we had escaped frost, barely, but when it got light, I went out and found a few patches of it out in the orchard. The gardens near the house were spared. According to the forecast it will rain from now until Wednesday, so we won’t have another chance for frost for a while. It was too cold and dewy to do anything outdoors that morning, so I made the first batch of applesauce. It was nice to be in the warm, steamy kitchen with cooking apples and breathe in that wonderful aroma.

Making applesauce.

The first batch of applesauce.

The lawn mower that was in the shop for two weeks finally arrived home on Saturday morning. While it was away, the lawn grew long and shaggy – the longest I think it has ever been. I went out at noon and began mowing. I had to use the grass catcher because I didn’t want to rake. It usually takes me about an hour to mow. This time it took me almost three. By the time I finished, it was time to do the chores. After that I was too tired to start anything new, so I ate some leftover pizza for dinner and watched Gardener’s World and Perry Mason for the rest of the evening. If that sounds a bit solitary and boring, that’s because I am all by myself.

After mowing yesterday.

Stacey, Miriam, and Hannah left Saturday morning to fly down to Florida. They are on an adventure with Stacey’s sister Roxann and our niece Emma. They are treasure hunting. Miriam took her metal detector and they will go beach combing with it. They flew into Miami. First they drove down to Key West. While there they will visit the Hemingway Museum. Then they’ll go back up to the mainland and beach comb. They’ll be gone until Wednesday. So I’m home alone for a few days. I wasn’t invited to go with them. It was a girls only adventure. I don’t really mind. I would have liked to have gone to the Hemingway Museum, but they would have had to sedate me to get me over those long bridges over the ocean on Highway 1. They’ve never been to Florida at this time of year. I think it will be hotter and more humid than they realize. I told them they might encounter more adventure than they expect. Hurricane Fiona has moved north, but a new tropical depression is strengthening in the Caribbean that could become a storm headed for Florida.

I don’t mind being home alone – for a while. I keep busy during the days. In the mornings, while in the house, I’ll be listening to Brahms, the music I crave in the fall. I’ll be working in the garden all day most days when the weather allows. When it’s rainy, I have a sign order to work on. On Tuesday I’m scheduled to be in school. It’s the evenings and nights that get to me. I’m often home by myself during the day, but not from dinnertime on into the night. That’s when the house starts to feel lonely. I don’t sleep well in the empty house. I toss and turn. Every little night noise wakes me. I’ll be glad when they are home again. They’ll tell me all about their adventure then and I’ll tell you all about it next week.

Sunrise last week.

The rain came during the night and it’s been raining steadily ever since. It was strange to be just me at church. Now I’m home, contemplating what to make for lunch. It will be something simple. Probably a cheese omelet. That’s my go-to meal when I have to fend for myself. After that, I’ll just sit around and listen to some Brahms and read, which will no doubt turn into a nap. And then on we go into the last week of September. Good Sabbath.