Fall or Autumn, Beautiful Either Way

Fall officially arrived last week and it seems that, right on cue, the world changed. We had frost that first morning. I checked the forecast at bedtime the night before and there was no frost warning. Sometime during the night they issued a warning, but it was too late. Nothing was covered in our yard. It was a light frost and didn’t do much damage. The basil got nipped. The pumpkin vines too, but they are large and out in the orchard and I wouldn’t have covered them anyway. Since then, the weather has been warmer.

Frost in the orchard.

The world is suddenly saturated with color. I don’t think it was just my imagination, but as soon as we passed the first day of fall, the colors seemed to “pop” overnight. Living here where the forests are mostly hardwood trees fall, in a good year, is breathtakingly beautiful. And this looks like it will be a good year. The sumacs along the roadsides are already glowing in incandescent shades of red. The maples and other trees are still changing, but the colors seem brighter than usual. The maple trees in my yard usually turn bright yellow, but this year there are vivid reds and oranges in the leaves. The asters and goldenrod seem brighter. Even the sky is a deeper, richer shade of blue and the sunrises and sunsets glorious.

Morning in the meadow on the first day of autumn.

Sunset on Thursday.

Almost every morning now there is fog. This not ordinary gloomy fog however. This is low-lying ground fog that settles into the creek bottoms, ravines, and valley floors while the air above is clear. It is a delicate fog full of wisps and swirls. When the sun comes up on one of these mornings and shines down on the ground fog, or through it if you are in the fog, it is beautiful, the essence of an autumn morning.

Sunrise with ground fog on Friday.

I was curious about using the words “fall” and “autumn” for this season. I wondered why we have two words for the same season, so I looked it up. The most common explanation is that fall is the older word and the one in use when our English ancestors came to America. Autumn became popular in England shortly after that, but we Americans continued to prefer fall. I use both words depending on how the they fit into what I’m saying. Fall is a short word (and a short season) and works well in some sentences. Autumn sounds more poetic and picturesque, and somehow a little sadder. Before fall and autumn became popular words, the season was simply called harvest.

It is a season of harvest. I picked elderberries and made jelly during the week. I picked all the basil and dried some and turned the rest into pesto that I froze. We’re still picking broccoli. The carrots are ready to be dug up now. The late apples are ripening. The grapes have finally started to turn purple and might be ripe before a hard freeze comes, if we are lucky. I picked the pumpkins, all three of them (not a good year for them), and brought them in. I’ll process them and freeze them this week. I picked the single pear from my beurré bosc pear tree. It is a pretty thing, the perfect example of what a pear should look like. Unfortunately, it’s the only one this year. I hope that next year there will be more. I say “I hope” a lot when I talk about my garden.

My only buerre bosc pear.

I spent an evening watching the beaver pond across the road. I went there hoping to identify the ducks I’d seen land on the water earlier. The ducks stayed hidden in the willow brush, but what I got to see was three beavers. Two were working on the dam. The other one swam along the edge of the pond and followed me (at a safe distance) as I walked along the top of the bank. Our beaver pond is right beside the road and near several houses, so I think the beavers are accustomed to humans more than their wilderness dwelling kin. All three beaver were big. I love watching them. The pond they have built has been such boon to our local wildlife. They transformed a mucky swamp into a lovely body of water full of birds, fish, and frogs.

The beaver pond.

That thing out in the water that looks like a stick is actually a beaver.

Tonight and tomorrow night, if the sky is clear, if you look toward the southwest you will see the planet Mars and the star Antares glowing close to each other. Antares is a first-magnitude star in the constellation Scorpius that glows bright and red and is often mistaken for Mars. It’s name Antares comes from the Greek, Άντάρης, meaning “equal to Ares (Mars).” Our night skies have been clear lately and the stars have been stunning so I’m hoping we’ll be able to go out into the orchard tonight and see Mars and Antares.

It was such a beautiful day today that we took the back roads home from church. We left Wellsville and drove over the hills into Whitesville, New York, and then into Genesee, Pennsylvania. Then we took the Ragg Hill Road to Ellisburg and up Cobb Hill and down the Rapley Road to home. It took us twice as long, but it was worth it. Days like this are rare and not to be wasted.

On our drive home from church: New York state up on Trapping Brook.

Near Whitesville, New York.

Coming up Cobb Hill near Gold.

On Cobb Hill.