Bright Blue Weather

All week long we had some of that famous October bright blue weather that Helen Hunt Jackson poeticized about.

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather.

She goes on for seven more stanzas extolling the beauties of the month. She is right: when the weather cooperates, October is a beautiful month. But I would not go as far as she does in saying it cannot rival June. I much prefer June to October. June is a growing month full of the finest garden days of the year. It is followed by July with more growth and warmth. October is a declining month. Its beauty is based on decay, is usually brief, and it's followed by winter and long weeks of cold. But last week, October gave us some glorious days.

Frosty Monday morning.

Monday, as soon as the frost was gone, I worked all day in the garden. It was sunny and breezy and in the high 60s—about as nice a day as we get in October. I borrowed Kurt's electric hedge trimmer and cut down all the tall, dead plants in the flowerbeds—phlox, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans—and the tall weeds around the lily pond. Then I mowed. I keep saying each time I mow that it is the last time, but the leaves keep falling, and I keep mowing them up. I'll probably have to mow again this week—for the last time.

The lettuce seeds I ordered arrived in Monday's mail. I went out right away and planted some in the hoop house where the tomatoes used to be. I planted three varieties—Buttercrunch, Winter Wonderland, and Parris Island Kos. I've never had much luck growing winter lettuce in the past, but back then I didn't have a hoop house where they will be protected from the worst of the cold. I'm hoping for success this time. We shall see.

Miriam was in school that day. When she got home, we took Kurt's truck and drove to Rhoda Lent's farm on Sweden Hill and picked up ten bales of straw. We had a nice visit with Rhoda while we were there. Back in the day when the Lents had a dairy herd, we bought our milk from them. Rhoda's farm is one of the nicest around. We brought the bales home and used them to make a wall around Miriam's beehive to block the wind that comes down the hill during the winter.

The winterized beehive.

Tuesday was as fine a day as Monday. Midmorning, Miriam and I took a drive over to Patterson's Maple Farm in Tioga County. Stacey is putting together a gift basket for the Rotary Club and she wanted some of their products—maple sugar, maple suckers, maple puffcorn, maple sugar candy, and maple glazed nuts. Patterson's is a big maple operation. They tap 85,000 trees. Our drive across Potter and Tioga Counties was beautiful. The trees are mostly done changing, but there are still vivid patches of color here and there.

That afternoon, I did a bit of burning. I raked the weeds that I'd cut down around the lily pond the day before into piles and reduced them to ash.

When I finished that, I picked apples. The King of Tompkins County tree is ripe. It's dropping fruit, and I didn't want any of it to go to waste. We had so little of it this year. First I picked what I could reach. Then I got the long-handled picker and kept going. The birds have been at the apples and a lot of them had holes pecked in them. Any apple that had holes also had yellow-jackets all over it. I managed to get two five-gallon buckets of reasonably good apples. I got two more buckets of bad apples that I tossed to the chickens.

Getting ready to pick apples.

My sad harvest.

On Wednesday, my main job was cleaning up the pavilion over on the Fosters' property. It's one of those places where people pile things and then forget about them. There is a bench along one side that had several years of accumulated stuff on it—bits of twine and rope, pieces of wire, broken plant clips, hoses with holes in them, plastic plant pots, and a lot of other junk. I sorted through it all, setting aside anything that was worth keeping and filled three big trash bags with the stuff that wasn't. There were things stashed under the bench too—pieces of lumber, some of it usable, a lot of it not, rolls of used plastic sheeting and landscape cloth—all in a hodgepodge heap. I organized it all. When I was done, the pavilion looked very tidy. Let's see how long that lasts.

The tidied pavilion.

Thursday morning was the coldest of the week. It was 19° at 5:30 when I got up. That's our first dip into the teens this season. The sunrise was frosty and very pretty. On my morning walk, I found there was a thin skim of ice on the beaver pond. Miriam was in school that day and I needed the car to run errands, so I dropped her off. As I was coming back home, the sun was coming up. I love the way the sunlight hits the top of the hills first and then the tops of the tallest trees. As the sun moves higher, the light seems to flow down the east-facing sides of the hills and into the ravines. There is still enough color in some of the trees that, when the light hits them, they glow against the general brownness.

Sunrise on Thursday.

Ice on the beaver pond.

Through the meadow on Thursday morning.

My first job of the day was rather mundane after all that morning glory. I had to make a trash run. I gathered all the trash in the house and then loaded it, plus the trash from my pavilion cleaning, into the car. Driving around on such a bright morning was delightful. When I got home again, I waited for it to warm up outside. While I waited, I worked on the computer and listened to music. That has become my daily routine now. The frost didn't melt until 10:00 and that gave me several hours to work. My music that morning was Chopin. I listened to the mazurkas, all fifty-eight of them. My journal transcription had reached 1997 by then. We were living in Frazier Park, and I was commuting two hours to work, sometimes with a broken ankle and a car with a manual transmission. I wrote that I had to scream every time I pushed the clutch with that broken foot. What times those were!

I got a phone call midmorning saying that Tosh was next door and there was a skunk in the live trap they'd set by their chicken yard. Tosh didn't know how to deal with it, so I took care of it. I took over a sheet and carefully covered the cage so as not to make it nervous. Then I loaded the covered cage into the back of the pickup truck and drove way up on Cobb Hill and let it go. I was lucky this was a very calm skunk. I've had them spray before when letting them out of the trap. This one just moseyed away.

Removing the skunk.

When I got back from skunk duty, I went back in the house and worked on my journals some more. Once the temperature outside had warmed to 60°, I went out to find something to do. I'm actually running out of things to do in the garden, which feels odd. With this nice sunny weather, I've finished nearly everything I need to do, and now I have to find little extra tasks to keep busy. That afternoon, I pulled up all the gladiolus and set them in the woodshed to dry out before storing them for the winter. That was a quick job. When I finished that, I looked around for something else to do and couldn't see anything, so I just sat in the sunshine and surveyed my little domain, pondering on plans for next spring. I do have a few big jobs that still need to be done. The main one is cleaning and winterizing the barn and chicken coop. But it seemed like a waste of a warm and sunny day to be in the dusty barn, so I procrastinated. I'll do that this week. Maybe.

Thursday night was pumpkin carving night. I had twenty pumpkins sitting on the back porch stairs. Miriam and Hannah selected six of them and set up their carving station in the big room upstairs. The tradition is that they watch E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial while they carve because the movie takes place at Halloween. Stacey and I didn't carve, but we watched the movie. My love of E.T. goes all the way back to its premiere. I waited in line for several hours at the Pacific Cinerama Dome theater in Hollywood for the midnight showing on its opening day back in 1982. My friends and I played Uno on the sidewalk while we waited. I loved the movie then, and I still do. I don't know how many times I've seen it now. I cry at certain points during it every time I watch it. It also has the honor of being the first time I ever saw Stacey cry at a movie. It was 1984 and we were newly married. We watched a video of it and it made Stacey cry. Shilligs are not noted for making such emotional displays. I, on the other hand, am a famous movie weeper. I shed tears again on Thursday night. Miriam and Hannah did a great job carving their jack-o'-lanterns. They come up with some pretty creative designs. When they were done, we set them on the front porch stairs and lit them.

Carving time.

This year's jack-o'-lanterns.

Friday morning was frosty and foggy, a strange combination. The morning light on my walk was soft and pearly. It was 29° when I went out. I was wearing my hoodie. I should have worn a heavier coat. The freezing damp had me shivering in a matter of minutes. I had to walk fast and didn't stay out long.

Frosty, foggy Friday morning.

Pearly light over the beaver pond.

While it was still too cold out to work outside, I prepared to continue with my journal transcribing. I was also craving more Chopin, so first I opened my music files to find something to listen to. I got immediately sidetracked. I abandoned my journals and ended up spending the rest of the morning organizing my Chopin music files by opus number—and listening to them as I did it. It satisfied my need for the music and my love of organizing things at the same time. My love for Chopin began way back in my teenage years. I first encountered him while exploring my parents' record collection, and became an instant devotee. When I started collecting my own records, I acquired a lot of Chopin. He appealed to my angsty teenage mentality. His music, sometimes bold and turbulent, sometimes tender and romantic, made me feel like a rebel in a very safe way. While my friends were listening to things like Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult, I was down in my basement bedroom with Chopin and my headphones, swallowed up in the beauty of it. The first time I remember a piece of music moving me to tears was when I was listening to Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor. I don't remember exactly why it moved me so deeply—probably some moody fourteen-year old episode I was going through—just that it did. It still does. Chopin has always been in my list of top ten composers, usually right near the top. I took a look back through these blogs and found that I've mentioned Chopin twenty-one times in the last ten years. After Bach, he gets the most attention, followed by Mozart, and then Vaughan Williams. Those four composers pretty much define my taste and temperament.

 

Chopin.

The afternoon, once it warmed a little, turned out to be another bright blue, perfect October day. I went out and wandered around the property for a while. I spent some time down with the chickens making mental notes on what I need to do to prepare for winter. Then I came up to the orchard, picked a perfect apple, and sat in the sunshine to eat it. What more could you ask for on such a day?

Saturday was busy, as it usually is. It was instilled in me from an early age that the house needed to be clean for the Sabbath. This belief was reinforced by the song we learned in Primary that taught us that:

Saturday is a special day.

 It's the day we get ready for Sunday:

We clean the house, and we shop at the store,

So we won't have to work until Monday.

We brush our clothes, and we shine our shoes,

And we call it the get-the-work-done day.

Then we trim our nails, and we shampoo our hair,

So we can be ready for Sunday.

I feel like I've spent most of my Saturdays cleaning the house. I actually like cleaning the house. Maybe I should say, I like having a clean house, therefore, I clean. Cleaning in our house is usually accompanied by music, and the music most often chosen is big-band music. I think the energy of it provides fuel for all the sweeping, dusting, mopping, laundry, etc. It's hard to sit still when the house is full of that music. You just direct the motion to some task and away you go. So I put on a long queue of music starting with Benny Goodman and moving on through Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, and the other greats, and grabbed a broom.

Saturday evening, when all the work was done and the day was growing dark, I turned off the big-band music and went back to Chopin. I was the only one home at the time. Miriam has gone down to the Thayns and will be there for a week. Stacey and Hannah were down at the firehall in Ulysses helping at a memorial service. In an empty and tidy house on a twilit Saturday evening, Chopin seemed the perfect way to wind down the day and the week. I put on the two piano concertos and sat in my bedroom in the dark with no other distractions and let the music engulf me. I closed my eyes and imagined, as I often do, that I was the one playing the piano. It was pure fantasy. My piano abilities are very weak, but my imagination is strong.

I once read about Acquired Savant Syndrome, where a brain injury results in a person suddenly speaking a different language perfectly, becoming a math genius, or becoming an accomplished pianist. One of the most famous of these is Derek Amato, who dove into a shallow swimming pool and suffered a severe concussion. He slept for five days, and when he woke up, he was a piano savant. I'm not saying that I wish I had a traumatic brain injury, but if I ever did, it would be nice if it resulted in my becoming a piano prodigy. I would love to be able to play Chopin or Bach.

This morning I watched the full moon set and the sun rise in a clear blue sky. The moon was bright and the sun was brighter. It was cold and frosty, but the light was beautiful. After I was ready for church, I sat by the furnace grate and reviewed my Sunday School and Elders Quorum lessons. I was so warm and comfortable that I dozed off again. I woke up fifteen minutes later and couldn't remember why I was sleeping in a chair.

Church today was good. We had guest speakers in sacrament meeting, a temple missionary couple from Palmyra. Our attendance was good. That was because Tabor and Rachel are here with a group of Tabor's high school friends. Tabor's group gets together every year and this year it was Tabor's turn to be the host, so he decided to have them come to Potter County. They arrived last night and will be here until Tuesday. They are staying down at the Patterson house. After church this morning, that group left to drive up to Palmyra to tour the Church History sites. They have things planned for tomorrow. I might tag along with them.

So we are home. It's just Stacey, Hannah, and I with Miriam gone. Lunch is warming in the oven. It's another gorgeous autumn day. It looks like this weather will continue through the week ahead—cold nights and mild days. I have appointments three days this week, to the chiropractor on Tuesday, a haircut on Thursday, and the dentist on Friday. I have a few last projects to fit in around those appointments, mainly getting the barn ready for winter. And through it all, I will revel in this bright blue weather as October comes to its end.

A Time for Last Things

All week I worked on things with the idea, or perhaps the hope, that it would be the last time I did them for the season, the year, or maybe forever.

I wrote last week that we started putting up the outdoor Christmas lights. We put up what I could find, but I knew there were more somewhere. On Monday, I searched the woodshed and found another box of them. I put these up around the back porch and strung them along the top of the chicken-yard fence. Now the outdoor lights are done and waiting to be turned on after Thanksgiving.

Tuesday was a big 'last-things' day. It was a gorgeous fall day. It was windy and 80°. I felt sure that it would be the last time this year that we'd have a day like that. It was so warm, I came in and changed from my heavy work overalls to a pair of shorts, the last time I'll be able to do that this year, no doubt.

We had a lot of things going on that day. I took advantage of the beautiful weather to work in the yard and garden all day. I weed-whacked around the overgrown edges of everything. I cleaned out the hosta beds at the front of the house and cut down the nettle patch along the side of the woodshed. I put away garden furniture and tools. Those were all 'last-time-this-season' jobs. Then I mowed up leaves off the lawn. That was an 'I-hope-it's-the-last-time-but-it-probably-isn't' job. 

Hannah spent hours in the afternoon and evening power washing the outside of the house for the last time this year. She likes to power wash and I'm glad, because I don't. She got most of it done, but she ran out of daylight. That was the only chance she had to do that, so it will have to remain unfinished. I'm glad she got done what she did. The house looks good.

Hannah power washing the front porch.

That afternoon, Miriam winterized her beehive. That was a 'first-and-last-time' activity. This is the first year she's had bees, so it's her first time winterizing. And it was the last time she'll open the hive until next spring. She took the other dead hive, disassembled it, and put it in storage in the barn. She doesn't like that style of hive and doesn't plan on using it ever again, so that was a 'last-time-forever' job.

Miriam winterizing her hive.

Late in the afternoon, when all my work was done, I sat in the garden and let myself relax. I sometimes forget to do that. My garden isn't all work. I do love the work, but my reason for it all is so that I can just enjoy being in it and doing nothing sometimes. So I sat in my favorite seat in the vegetable garden and watched the world for a while. It was windy. There were leaves whirling through the air at times. The vegetable beds were tidy, the pathways clean. The sun was warm and the sky was blue with white clouds moving quickly across it. There was nothing I needed to do, nothing requiring my attention. I listened for birds. The only ones I heard were crows far away making a ruckus over something. Everything looked beautiful in the long afternoon light, but also tinged with that autumnal melancholy I've always loved. I immersed myself in the moment and let my mind go blank. I don't know how long I sat there. It seemed ages. As the light waned, a thought popped into my head. It was a line from one of Shakespeare's sonnets that I'd listened to the day before. I don't have it memorized even though it is one of my favorites. It seemed to fit the moment.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all the rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

When I was done with my meditation, I folded up my garden seat and put it away for the winter.

As the season winds down and the main display of fall leaves is done, most of the color in the world fades away. That's when I especially notice every pop of brightness that remains. All through the garden and at the edges of the property, there are surprising splashes of color. Along the roadsides, the sumacs are at their best now. They glow with incandescent colors against the dull fields behind them.

Pops of color around the yard. Top: honeysuckle, blackberry leaves, burning bush.
Middle: blueberry bush, witch hazel, American hazel.
Bottom: poke stems, late wallflowers, asparagus berries.

Roadside sumac near Genesee.

On Wednesday the world reverted back to more typical October weather. The day began with a beautiful sunrise, but, "Red in the morning…" usually proves true, so I knew rain was coming. After dropping Miriam off at school, I had errands to run up in Wellsville. By the time I got home, the morning was gone, and it was raining.

My morning walk on Wednesday: the swing.

My morning walk on Wednesday: the beaver pond.

My morning walk on Wednesday: almost home as the colors start to fade.

Because it was too damp to do anything outside, I worked on my journal transcription project. I'm working through my 1995 and 1996 journals now. In one of the entries, I wrote that I was listening to Aaron Copland's Sonata for Violin and Piano and how much I loved it. I realized as I transcribed it that I hadn't heard that piece of music since the day I wrote that thirty-one years ago. I love Copland's music and own recordings of most of it, but not that piece. I went to YouTube and found a performance of it with Aaron Copland playing the piano and Isaac Stern on the violin. I stopped what I was doing and sat and listened. It fit the mood of the day perfectly. After that, I went on a Copland binge for the rest of the morning—Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Our Town, The Red Pony, and other wonderful music.

Thursday was feed-buying day. I used to buy my chicken feed from the big chain stores, Tractor Supply or Runnings, but there is a family-owned feed store in Coudersport, and I switched to buying from them. They are a bit more expensive, but the quality of their feed is as good or better, and I like supporting local businesses. So, after dropping Miriam off at school, I headed into town. I usually like to begin stockpiling feed around this time of year. As we approach winter, I feel safer with a big supply on hand, just in case. It's the squirrel syndrome. I bought 200 pounds of feed and a hundred pounds of scratch. When I got home, I hauled it all to the barn and put it in buckets. That won't be the last time I buy feed this year. I will continue to buy a couple hundred pounds every two weeks until all my feed buckets are full.

Unloading chicken feed.

While I was in town, I stopped at the metal shop and picked up the bell we had them restore. The bell was on a post on the Fosters' property next door, and it was in bad shape. It was corroded and had lichens growing on it. Its clapper had fallen off. We took it to the metal shop in Coudersport and had them sandblast, powder-coat it, and fix the clapper. We had it powder-coated gold, of course. It looks nice. Now we have to figure out where to put it.

The restored bell.

When I got home, it was drizzling, which prevented me from working outdoors. I spent the next few hours processing pumpkins while working on my journals. I had ten pumpkins that needed to be done. One by one, through the day, I steamed, gutted, mashed, and froze them. By the end of the day I'd only processed five, and I was tired of pumpkins. But I'm also thankful that we had such a plentiful harvest this year.

Finally at 2:30 p.m., the sun broke through and I left my pumpkins and computer and went outside. There is a weedy patch on the property line between our house and the Shilligs', just behind my vegetable garden. It is made up mostly of sunchokes mixed with goldenrod, wild raspberries, and pokeweed. It is overgrown and unkempt, and I was tired of it, so I spent the rest of the afternoon ripping it out. Of all the garden mistakes I've made, introducing sunchokes (also known as Jerusalem artichokes, although they are not in any way related to artichokes and have nothing to do with the Holy Land) to the property is my greatest regret. I planted a handful of them more than twenty years ago as a food crop. We didn't like how they tasted (they taste like dirt and give you horrendous gas) and we do not eat them. Over the years, they have spread all over the property. They are almost impossible to eradicate. I'm determined to wipe out this particular patch. On Thursday, I began phase one of my sunchoke eradication project. I pulled up what I could. That took me until dinnertime. Phase two would have to wait for Friday.

Phase two of Project Choke-Out-the-Sunchokes was supposed to take place on Friday, but the weather did not allow it. It rained all day. I wasn't happy that my plans were thwarted. I went back to processing pumpkins, resumed my journal project, and put on some Stravinsky. He seemed to be the composer most suited to my mood. I started with The Firebird, moved on through Petrushka, and finished with The Rite of Spring. It was cathartic. I processed the rest of the pumpkins—a 'last-time-for-the-year' project completed.

Miriam and I drove out to the Amish bulk food store on Fox Hill in the afternoon. We were surprised to see a field of what looks like rapeseed blooming along the Rooks Road. It was nice to see the bright yellow flowers on such a gloomy day. They must have planted it as a cover crop. It will not have time to produce mature seeds before cold weather comes.

 

A field of yellow on a gray day.

We had our traditional fabulous Friday pizza à la Hannah dinner. The Fosters and Kurt joined us. After dinner, Stacey and I went to the movies. We saw Heart of the Beast. I am not a fan of dog movies, but I thought this one was great. It was filmed in Alaska and the scenery was beautiful.

Saturday morning, Stacey, Hannah, and Julie left to attend a Relief Society activity in Jamestown. After they were gone, I puttered around waiting for the sun to break through the morning clouds and the day to warm a little. It was 32°. I watered my houseplants. I switched over a load of laundry. Then I looked out the window and saw that it was snowing. I cringed. I knew it wouldn't stick. It only lasted about ten minutes. But still, it was snow. I'm not ready for snow.

You can't see it very clearly, but it is snowing.

It didn't warm up much through the day, but the sun broke through finally around 10:00 and I put on my grubby garden hoodie and my work gloves and went out. My main goal was to finish my sunchoke project. I attacked what was left in that patch with my sickle and cut everything to ground level. Then Kurt came with his tractor. He hauled away the piles of debris I'd made, removed a large pile of rocks, and then tilled the area. Looking over the cleared ground, I decided to plant more blueberry bushes there. I already have a row of eight bushes across that part of the yard. I will extend that row and add another eight bushes. I can't plant until spring, but I can get the ground ready. I had Kurt dump pine wood chips there and then I raked them out. It looks good. It's done and now we'll wait for spring.

That weedy jungle on the right is the sunchoke patch.

Partway through the project, lots of piles.

Project complete, everything tidy.

It was 22° when I got up this morning. After reluctantly crawling out of my warm bed, I went to the living room and stood over the furnace grate for a few minutes. It felt like a January morning, not mid-October. A snow flurry on Saturday morning and now this bitter cold on Sunday—I hope this isn't an indication of what winter has in store for us. I took a very hot shower and dressed for church. By then, the sun was rising. I looked out the windows and saw a world white with frost. It all went away as soon as the sun came up.

Church was good today, but attendance was light. I enjoyed the drive to and from Wellsville. Most of the maples on the hills are done, but there are still some very pretty areas. The oaks with their smoky reds and oranges, and the larches with their butterscotch yellow are starting to turn now. I'm sitting here waiting for lunch and thinking about all the things I want to accomplish in the week ahead. My list of projects is getting shorter, but there is always something to do. The weather looks like it will be reasonable all week. I think I'll tackle cleaning the pavilion. It gets cluttered over the summer and I like things to be tidy for the winter. There are other things to consider, like making room to store the Cub Cadet for the winter. I need to do one more big barn cleaning and winterize it before the cold weather settles in. And there are more leaves to mow, blow, or burn. That's plenty to keep me busy, and when I'm busy, I'm happy.

Burning Through the Month

The Kuprovs arrived at the Shilligs' late last Sunday evening to spend the week. Rachel and her children left to go home late on Monday afternoon. During the time overlap, the Thayn and Kuprov children played non-stop. The last thing we did before the Thayns departed was clean the Raymond Cemetery. We do that every October and the children like to help. We gathered up all the flags that we put on the veterans' graves back before Memorial Day. We picked up all the artificial flowers.

The cemetery cleanup crew.

Monday was a beautiful day for doing things outdoors—playing, working, and cleaning the cemetery. It was a little on the chilly side and it was windy, but the sky was blue and the sun was bright. I spent the late morning, after the dew was dry, mowing. We've reached the point where I'm mowing up more leaves than grass. When I finished mowing, I worked in the garden doing more cutting, ripping, and digging. The weather forecast said we would have a hard freeze on Monday night going into Tuesday. Not a frost, a hard freeze. Knowing that, I had no qualms about tearing out plants that I knew wouldn't make it through the night.

Next, I put all the garden furniture away. The rocking chair on the front porch and the two blue seats out by the lily pond went into the upper part of the barn. The garden bench went into the greenhouse. I will sit there to bask in the sun during the cold months.

My winter sunshine refuge.

Late in the afternoon, I brought every potted plant I wanted to save into the back porch and the woodshed—the night-blooming jasmine, lime tree, lavender, rosemary, lemon verbena, and the pelargoniums. All the other plants I ruthlessly left to the mercy of the cold.

Aside from all the destructive garden work, I did do one constructive thing on Monday—I planted garlic. I'd saved the best bulbs from this year's harvest, and on Monday afternoon I sat and split them into their individual cloves. I planted a hundred cloves in one of the raised beds in my vegetable garden. As usual, I split too many, so I took the leftovers out to the big garden and planted them in one of the rows Kurt just tilled. I ended up planting almost a hundred there too. I think we'll have plenty of garlic next year.

The newly planted garlic bed.

I watched the temperature as evening came on. At 5:55 it was 55°. I thought that was a nice coincidence. By the time I went to bed at 10:00, it was 38°. When I got up at my usual time, 5:30 on Tuesday morning, it was 26°. Sunrise was at 7:13 and, as often happens, the temperature dipped just before it to 24°. When I went out to do the morning chores, everything was crisp and crunchy. Any tender plant still clinging to life was finally laid to rest. But that's okay. It's time.

Tuesday morning.

Inside the house that morning, the temperature was 57°, too chilly to be comfortable. We have a rule that the furnace is not to be lit until late in October, preferably at Halloween. We've broken the rule many times before. We broke it again on Tuesday. Stacey, the furnace enforcer, relented and lit it before she left for work. It came on with that quiet whoosh that I love to hear. The smell of the furnace as the summer's accumulation of dust burns off is a powerful aroma. It's right up there with burning leaves and wood smoke on my nostalgic autumn scent list. Now that the furnace is lit, the chair beside it, my winter reading spot, is ready. It's time to make my winter reading list.

I had errands to run that morning and, as I drove to Wellsville and back, I could see that the freeze had changed the trees on the hills. I've heard people say that frost improves the intensity of the colors, but that isn't really so. Chilly weather does, but a hard frost or a freeze is too damaging and usually puts a quicker end to the season. That's what it looked like as I traveled the roads that morning. The colors hadn't been that vibrant to begin with this year, and now they were duller. The goldenrod isn't golden any more. The purple asters are shriveled. The world is going brown.

As I drove around on my errands, I listened to an audio book. I don't often do that. I prefer to hold what I'm reading in my hands. But I discovered a book that begs to be heard, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare, edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, narrated by Kenneth Branagh and Lolita Chakrabarti. I love Shakespeare's Sonnets. Almost once a year, I read through them. In this book, the editors have gathered all of the sonnets—the ones traditionally published together, as well as the ones that occur in the plays. Listening to Kenneth Branagh read them is delightful. He is my favorite interpreter of Shakespeare. He's brilliant. Here he is reading Sonnet 30.

All week as I've worked in the garden, I've noticed the birds. There aren't many around now. The migrating birds have mostly gone south. There are no robins, bluebirds, hummingbirds, or swallows anymore. The ones I still see, mostly finches of different sorts and the catbirds, are busy feeding. It's harvest time for them too. As I mill about working, they fly away from me in fright. I wish they knew that I do not care. They can help themselves to all the sunflower seeds and over-ripe raspberries they can eat. I planted all those sunflowers for them. And we are done picking raspberries now. The goldfinches and chickadees are so stealthy, thinking they must steal the seeds. And the catbirds, always shy, furtively prowl among the berry canes, hoping I will not see them. I want to tell them, "Don't fly when I approach. Eat away! Take everything so I don't have to clean it up." I've always envied Adam in his Eden and Doctor Dolittle in his veterinary clinic in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh for their ability to communicate with animals. One of the things I look forward to during the Millennium, besides having a resurrected body and dwelling in peace and happiness with my eternal family, is that "in that day, the enmity of man, and the enmity of beasts, yea, the enmity of all flesh. shall cease before my face." (Doctrine and Covenants 101:26) Or as the prophet Isaiah describes it:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and leopard shall lie down with the kid; and calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:6-9).

After doing the afternoon chores, I burned the leaves along the side of the road. The edge of our front yard along the road forms a sharp bank and the leaves blow into it and form a long drift. I lit the drift in several places and watched it as it burned. The smell of the leaves conjured ancient memories.

Burning leaves along the road.

We had more fire later on. When Hannah got home from work, we lit the bonfire out on the edge of the orchard. The pile was big, a mix of branches from the pine trees the Fosters cut down and lots of garden debris. Because it was so big and densely packed, it burned hot for a while and then smoldered on through the night.

The bonfire on Tuesday evening.

The bonfire was still burning on Wednesday morning, low and smoky. There was frost again that morning. I suppose it will be a rare morning when we don't have frost for the next long while. I had an appointment at the optometrist that morning. It had been more than a year since I last had my eyes checked and I suspected that my prescription had changed. I was right. I ordered new glasses.

We continued to ready the yard and garden that day. The big project was cleaning out the lily pond. Miriam borrowed a pair of waders and went into the water. The pond is small and only four feet deep at the deep end, but it has a steep and slippery slope to it. She cut back the overgrown plants—flags, pickerel weed, and water lilies. I stood by and raked out debris. The pond is ready now. One more thing checked off the list.

The lily pond all cleaned out for the winter.

The piano tuner came that afternoon. We have him tune the piano every year. I like to watch him take it apart and work on every wire. 

Tuning the piano.

Later that afternoon, when Hannah got home from work, she and I put up some of the outdoor Christmas lights. It's a little early, but we've learned the hard way that it's better to do it before the cold weather sets in. We put them on the fence in the driveway flowerbed, on the front porch, and on the second story. We won't turn them on until the day after Thanksgiving. That's another thing checked off the list.

Christmas lights up all ready and waiting.

Despite our frosty mornings, the roses have bloomed. Two of my bushes, the rugosa in the long border, and Gertrude Jekyll in the driveway bed, have one blossom each. They are lovely and sad in their loneliness. Every time I see them, I start to sing, "'Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone; all her lovely companions are faded and gone…"

The sad, last Gertrude Jekyll rose of the year.

I've started processing pumpkins. Every day I try to do one or two. Our eating pumpkins (as opposed to the decorative ones) are a variety called Winter Luxury. They are small enough that I can steam them whole in the Instant Pot. I steam them, then cut them in half, scoop out the seeds and then the flesh. I mash the flesh, drain it, and freeze it. We use a lot of pumpkin for cookies, bread, and pies. Miriam baked some pumpkin cookies on Wednesday, a thank-you gift for the people at Stacey's work who let us borrow their stump grinder. She also made some pumpkin spice horchata that was delicious.

Steamed pumpkin, waiting to be scooped.

Miriam's pumpkin cookies.

There was more burning on Thursday. I made a dead hedge a few years ago along the edge of my stone fruit orchard extension. I wanted it to act as a windbreak for those more tender trees. If you'll remember, a dead hedge is made of branches, mostly the pruning from the apple trees and other branches that fell from the maples, piled in hedge fashion. It started out okay. I added to it every year, making it taller. But the weeds grew up in it, primarily sunchokes and goldenrod, and it looked unkempt. I kept hearing that people didn't like it. They said it was ugly. It made my orchard look untidy. So I decided to burn it down. Thursday was a good day to do that. There was a nice low wind to fan the flames and it was blowing away from the house. I lit the top end of it and within an hour it had burned all the way to the other end. On Friday, Kurt dragged and tilled the area for me. Then we covered it with landscape cloth to keep the weeds from growing. I'm going to plant an elderberry hedge there in the spring.

Burning the dead hedge.

Where the dead hedge used to be.

Kurt clearing and tilling.

Where the dead hedge used to be. Ready for a new hedge in the spring.

Friday was a lovely fall day. It was sunny, breezy, and cool. I spent most of the day in my vegetable garden among the raised beds. I cleaned out the last of the tomatoes in the hoop house and prepared the beds for winter lettuce. I weeded and raked the paths between the beds. As I was working, I noticed some nice looking apples on the tree nearest that garden. It's the King of Tompkins County tree, the biggest and oldest apple tree in the orchard, one of two survivors from the original orchard planted in the 1920s. It's also one of the only trees to bear fruit this year. It's usually our most prolific tree and the source for most of our cider and applesauce, but this year it only has maybe three bushels of fruit on it. It's a late tree, usually ripening about now. I picked an apple to see if they are ready. They are. The apple I ate was crisp and sweet and juicy. I relished every bite. Unfortunately, a yellow-jacket thought it was entitled to a taste too. It persistently tried to land on the apple and my face. I had to run to the house to finish the apple, and it chased me the whole way. The yellow-jackets have been a nuisance this fall. They killed one of Miriam's beehives, and now they won't even let me eat an apple in peace.

The very last of the tomatoes.

The King of Tompkins County tree.

They are delicious apples.

On Friday afternoon, the Kuprovs left to return to their home in Alabama. Right after they left, Hannah, Miriam, and I drove back up to the overlook. The air was a little clearer this time. I think that was the peak of fall color for us. We have rain for the next few days and that will put an end to it.

From the overlook on Friday afternoon.

Saturday was a busy day. It was another perfect October day. I spent the day in my vegetable garden again. I clipped out all the dead morning glory vines from their trellis. It was a tedious task. They were twisted and tangled and wrapped tight to the trellis wire. It took me several hours to clean them up. After that, I finished the stone path through the middle of the long border. I began that project a long while back, but waited until the flowers were done to finish because it required chopping out a swath of plants. It's done now, and I'm glad. One more thing checked off the list.

I mowed in the afternoon. I'm hoping that it was the last time this year. I cut the grass extra short. When the grass is short like that, the leaves are less likely to stay on the lawn. The wind, if I'm lucky, blows them away.

Bit by bit, my world is contracting as the garden closes down. There are fewer and fewer things to do. Days fit for working outdoors will become more scarce. After a while, the only things left will be doing the chores and taking walks. As winter comes on, the walks will become rarer, and only the chores will remain. Then I must find ways to occupy my time and feed my brain during the long, cold months. I have books and music, family history, my journal project, and garden planning for next year. Those are my usual distractions. Standing here on the front edge of it, I'm almost looking forward to relaxing for a while. I won't have to mow or weed or worry about beetles or blight for a long time. But that won't last. My discontent usually sets in after the holidays and, once it starts, it grows quickly. But that's all ahead. For now, I'll bask in every day worth basking in, and hope the supply doesn't run out too soon.

I heard the rain come in the night. It makes a nice noise on the porch roof. It's been raining all day. A rainy Saturday is a sad thing, but I don't mind a rainy Sunday. I'm enjoying a sabbath rest, so it can rain all it wants. Church today was good. In Sunday School we discussed some of my favorite chapters of Isaiah. I especially love chapter 53 where Isaiah writes so beautifully about the Messiah seven hundred years before his birth. I especially love this chapter because Handel used so many verses from it in his oratorio Messiah. His settings of the aria "He was despised and rejected of men," and the choruses "Surely he hath borne our griefs," "And with his stripes," and "All we like sheep," are my favorite part of the oratorio. I'm listening to it right now. Glorious music.

Today is Fast Sunday and I am ready to break my fast. Some months, fasting doesn't bother me a bit, but other times, like today, I am ravenous by the end of it. Lunch prep is underway and I'm ready to eat. The week ahead looks like a mix of good and not-so-good weather. We're at the point where I don't have much to do, so I don't need to fret over it. The only thing that makes me fret now is to see snow in the forecast, and there isn't any. May it remain so for weeks to come. Good Sabbath.