Into Fall

The equinox has passed and it’s officially fall now. Here in Potter County, fall can be spectacular, but it is always the shortest season of the year. Many of our deciduous trees, as usual, began to change well before the season’s official start. We hope all year for a bright and colorful fall and some years we get one and others we don’t. It will not be one of the bright and colorful ones in our yard. My maple trees seem anxious to get it over with so they can rest through the winter. They suffered from anthracnose this year due to the wet weather we had and lost a lot of their leaves over the summer, so they look sparse and drab. Out on the hills I think the trees fared better and will dazzle us. I hope so.

There won't be much color from my maples this year.

In the predawn hours now I see Orion rising in the east. It is a beautiful constellation, but it is the harbinger of colder, darker days. I love the names of the stars that make up Orion – Bellatrix at his right shoulder, red glowing Betelgeuse at his left shoulder, Meissa at his throat, the three belt stars Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, Saiph at his left knee, and Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation, at his right knee. Through the fall and winter Orion will rise earlier and earlier in the evening and shine all through the night.

Orion (not my photo).

With the garden in decline and the world cooling into autumn, I’m coming to that part of the year when I find myself with more time to read, to listen to music, and to think. I’ve been accused before of thinking too much – I think brooding was the exact term. I think I do brood quite a bit. Brooding is an interesting word. It comes from the Old English noun brod meaning the offspring of egg-laying animals. Around the year 1300 it came to be used for human offspring as well. The verb to brood at first meant, and still means, to “sit on eggs for the purpose of hatching them.” I have a broody hen in my barn right now. But around 1570, it took on the figurative meaning of “to meditate long and anxiously” (actually to “incubate in the mind”). I suppose  to some people a broody hen might seem to be meditating long and anxiously. That certainly describes my kind of brooding. It is more directed and intense than daydreaming (which I’m also very good at). As the days grow shorter and colder and I retreat from the garden to a chair by the wood stove, I will grow more and more broody.

Lola, my perpetually broody hen.

While brooding on the condition of the world last week I thought how, if you had told me, back when I was a teenager devouring all those science fiction novels and television shows, that this is what the world would be like when I was in my sixties, I wouldn’t have believed you. Looking around now, I don’t see much of what those shows and authors depicted. Where are all the flying cars, the androids, the interstellar travel, the ultramodern self-sustaining cities, the enlightened and benevolent societies of highly evolved humans that were going to be the world of the 21st century? I took a class in Science Fiction Literature when I was at BYU in 1976 where I was taught that good science fiction takes present trends and extrapolates them into the future. Good science fiction should have a trace of believability in it because we should be able to see some infant form of the future it describes in the world now. A lot of the SciFi novels I read were dystopian, describing a future where technology had run amok or where humanity had ruined the world, but some were utopian, describing a time when technology would make us freer and happier. It seems the dystopian school might have been more accurate in their predictions than the utopian school. In my declining (and perhaps a little wiser) years, I now know that I don’t want the world to turn out the way even the most hopeful of those SciFi writers predicted. I can’t imagine the chaos and noise of having everyone zooming around in flying cars, the cars on the roads now are bad enough. And the closer we get to filling the world with androids and computers with artificial intelligence, the more horrifying it seems. It seems now that the SciFi novels we are most closely growing to resemble are Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Huxley’s Brave New World. And that’s not a good thing. Instead of highly advanced SciFi-esque civilizations, I find myself longing for and seeking a simpler, freer, less technological life – something more like the Waltons or the Amish than the Jetsons or Star Trek. I fear the Orwellian world of “Big Brother”, “doublethink”, “Thought Police”, “thoughtcrime”, “Newspeak”, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and other dystopian nightmares we seem to be plummeting towards. But most of all, I long for a time of righteousness and peace on the earth when “the enmity of man, and the enmity of beasts, yea, the enmity of all flesh, shall cease and Satan will be bound, that he shall have no place in the hearts of the children of men.” I long for the Millennium described in the scriptures and foretold by prophets ancient and modern when Christ will reign on an earth that will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.

Three books I never hoped would come true.

On Tuesday I was not in school. It was a fine late summer/early fall day, although the morning was overcast. I thought it might rain, but it didn’t. I spent the morning in the kitchen chopping and boiling tomatoes. I think that will be the last batch of the season. I’m ready for it to be. There are still tomatoes on the very sad vines, but not enough in quantity or quality to make any more sauce. We had a good harvest. I love seeing jars of sauce, salsa, and soup lined up on the shelves. I also started a batch of sauerkraut that afternoon. My cabbages were pitiful this year. The heads were very small. It took seven of them to make the one and only batch of the year. I shredded them, salted them, and pounded them into the crock. I get complaints when I keep the crock in the kitchen, the fermentation process is pretty fragrant, so I put the crock in the woodshed inside a styrofoam cooler. I don’t need to keep it cool, I just need to keep it safe since I won’t be able to keep as close an eye on it out there. It should be ready to eat in six or seven weeks.

A week's worth of canning ready to shelve.

Tuesday afternoon we helped Kurt pull up the rest of the onions out in the big garden. There were some very big, pretty onions. Now they are curing out in the pavilion. When they are cured and trimmed, our onion harvest will be over. We also brought in most of the pumpkins and squash. Most of them were ready to pick and I saw that some critter, a woodchuck I suspect, had been chewing on some of them. Kurt and Hannah helped me pick them and haul them to the house. Then Hannah and I washed them and set them on the porches to cure – the smaller ones on the back porch and the big ones on the front. The big pumpkins and a few of the smaller ones are for decoration. I only grow one kind of pumpkin for eating, Winter Luxury. They are the best tasting of any pumpkin I’ve ever grown. I also grew some delicata, Queensland blue, and butternut squash. There are a few more pumpkins and squash still out in the garden that weren’t quite ready. We’ll probably bring them in later this week. With tomatoes done and kraut in process, onions in the last stages of harvest, and pumpkins and squash mostly done, the only big event left of the 2021 garden year is the apples and they are just getting underway.

Pulling up onions.

A cartload of pumpkins.

Small pumpkins and squash curing on the back porch.

Big pumpkins curing on the front porch.

While waiting for the fall leaf spectacle to get going, I cherish all the color remaining in the garden. The late-bloomers are some of my favorite flowers – sedum that starts pink and slowly turns rusty red, bright orange and yellow calendulas and marigolds, pastel cosmos, blue rose of Sharon (at last!), and pure white anemones. I find happy surprises in the garden, little unexpected gems that make me smile – like a single iris that decided to bloom in the fall, or a dragonfly and snails hiding in the kiwi vines, or the setting sun shining through the tops of some decorative grass. The colchicums reached their peak last week before rain came on Wednesday and battered them. There are potted mums on the front porch stairs, a sure sign of the season.

One of my sedums.

Calendulas, dahlias, gazanias, and salvia.

Marigolds.

Cosmos.

My blue Rose of Sharon.

Autumn anemones.

The surprise iris.

Dragonfly in the kiwis.

Snails in the kiwis.

My single colchicums.

My double colchicums.

The whole colchicum patch.

It rained all day on Wednesday and all night and all morning on Thursday. We were pretty waterlogged. The creek across the road rose. There were puddles everywhere. I needed to mow the lawn, but the yard was like a wet sponge. Rain at this time of year can be more of a curse than a blessing. It can make apples that are almost ripe swell and crack. The best fall weather for apples is cool and dry.

Mums on the front porch stairs.

On Friday morning, while I was waiting for the weather to clear, I made jelly and jam. I had enough raspberries to make a full batch of jelly with a bit left over. I mixed the leftover raspberry juice with some blueberries and strawberries we’d frozen over the summer and made a mixed berry jam. While we were down at the Thayn’s last weekend, Sarah treated us to some pepper jelly she’d made. We ate it drizzled over goat cheese and cream cheese and spread on crackers. It was so delicious, I decided to make a batch of that too. It all turned out great. Finally, late in the morning, the weather cleared and I got to mow the lawn. On the front lawn I mowed more leaves than grass. In preparation for the apple harvest, I mowed the orchard grass for the second and last time of the year. I hate to admit it, but I’ll be glad when we’re done with mowing for the year.

A sample of my jellies: raspberry, mix berry jam, pepper jelly.

The lawn after mowing - no leaves for a few minutes.

The mowed orchard.

Saturday was one of the prettiest falls days we’ve had so far. Of course we’ve only had five so far, but it was a good one. It started off pretty chilly. It was 38° when I got up in the morning. Looking back at past years, I can see that we’ve usually had at least one frost by this time. I’m glad we haven’t had one yet, though I know it won’t be long now. I had things to do outdoors, but I waited until the sun warmed things up a bit. By 10:00 we were back up in the 60's, and that was warm enough for me. I spent the day cleaning out flowerbeds at the front of the house and planting bulbs in them. In the afternoon I drove into town to buy chicken feed. The roadsides are lined with goldenrod and asters. The hills are beginning to show some color. When I got back, after I’d unloaded the feed and done the chores, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the orchard. I picked apples. The chestnut apples are perfectly ripe. I’d already stripped the lower branches a few days ago and turned them into applesauce, so I got a ladder and picked the rest of them. They are in a bucket on the back porch awaiting a similar fate. The honeycrisps were also ready and I picked them. I only got a half bucket of them – they bore a light crop this year and I might have eaten five or six of them while I was picking. They are one of my favorite apples. I picked the bosc pears on the tree that I’d intended to cut down this spring. I got a basket of the nicest pears it has ever borne and felt a little guilty about my previous herbicidal intentions. I can’t think of a better way to spend a lovely fall afternoon than in the orchard.

Picking apples.

Tiny crab apples that look like cherries.

A basket of bosc pears.

This is another picture perfect early fall day, made even better for being the Sabbath. The drive to and from church was beautiful. There is a cool breeze blowing, but the sun is shining brightly in a bright blue sky full of fluffy white clouds. I think after lunch I will take a slow stroll around the gardens and through the orchard. Days like this should not be wasted indoors. But first, I need some lunch.