On Thursday we will pass the Autumnal Equinox, the point in the year when the dark hours begin to prevail over the light ones. Fall is our shortest season here. Although the astronomical calendar gives it around ninety days, here in Potter County it usually only lasts about thirty, from mid September to around the second or third week of October – in a good year. Some years it only lasts a few weeks before winter asserts itself. I can already see the beginnings of fall all around me now. The nights are chilly. Most mornings are foggy. The trees are starting to change. The transition from summer into autumn is beautiful. To me it bears witness to the compassion of the Creator who, instead of making an abrupt and brutal plunge into an icy winter sleep, designed the growing world to fold gracefully in on itself. The fair weather birds quietly depart. Plants set seed and fade away. The trees withdraw their sap and turn their green leaves into colors unimaginable in midsummer. When it finally comes, the frost is a quiet killer, but it is also beautiful and merciful. It dispatches the tender struggling annuals and hastens their return to the soil. The growing season ends with a blaze of color before it dissolves to brown and gray and then white. I always feel a touch of melancholy in the fall, but it isn’t an unpleasant feeling. It is the perfect counterpoint to the excitement of spring and the exuberance of summer.
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| Sunchokes, the beautiful bane of my garden. |
I’ve often written about the music that plays in my head almost constantly. Most mornings, when I wake up, some song or piece of music starts and goes on through the day, sometimes the same music for days, occasionally for weeks. The music can vary greatly from Classical to Rock and Roll. I’ve had the song Zombie by the Cranberries stuck in my head more than once. One time it was Scott Joplin’s ragtime piece Solace that played for days. There was a whole month once when I heard the Brahms Violin Concerto in my head. Most often the music is a hymn. I think of all the music that I love, I love the hymns the most. Out of the 350 hymns in our present hymnal, I know 260 of them well enough to sing at least one verse from memory. Last week the hymn that accompanied me through most of the days was one of my most favorite, Abide With Me. My love for that hymn stretches back for as far as I can remember singing hymns. It seems to me that I have always known it. When I was young, and even now, if I have trouble falling asleep at night, it is the hymn that I sing in my head. When I was on my mission in Japan, trying to cope with the struggles of being in a strange land and speaking a strange language, I think I sang Abide With Me as I fell asleep every single night.
The words to the hymn were written by Henry Francis Lyte (1793 – 1847), an Anglican minister. Tradition says that Lyte, who was dying of tuberculosis, wrote the hymn a few hours after conducting his final service at his church, on 5 September 1847. He wrote eight verses, but only three of them, 1, 2, and 6, are used in our hymnal. Here are all eight verses:
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
But as Thou dwell’st with Thy disciples, Lord,
Familiar, condescending, patient, free.
Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings;
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea.
Come, Friend of sinners, thus abide with me.
And though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
The beautiful tune we sing it to, called Eventide, was written by the English organist, William Henry Monk (1823 – 1889) who also wrote the tune to All Things Bright and Beautiful. I suppose Abide With Me haunts me these days because, as I work in the garden and look out on the world, I see plenty of change and decay as the glories of the season pass away. It also comforts me as I see the world I know growing old. My parents, now in their 90's and others that I know are seeing life’s little day ebb swiftly to its close. I see it in myself a bit. I’m not trying to be gloomy, although I often feel a bit that way at the end of summer, but the message of the hymn brings comfort and hope to me.
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| Henry Francis Lyte |
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| William Henry Monk |
Monday and Tuesday were rainy days. I wasn’t in school on those days, so I spent time doing indoor things. I worked on family history. I listened to a few podcasts. On Tuesday morning I made a batch of raspberry jelly. It wasn’t the perfect sort of day for jelly making. It was foggy, rainy, and dreary outside, but I needed a project and making jelly seemed like a cheerful thing to do. Filling the house with the delicious aroma of raspberries brightened the day for me.
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| My batch of raspberry jelly. |
On Wednesday the weather cleared. I was in school, but as soon as I got home, I went to work in the garden. I began the Big Cleanup. I started in the middle of the long border and began ripping out spent plants, rooting out weeds, and moving some plants to new locations. Later that evening we began digging up potatoes. We made it less than a quarter of the way down the row and filled two big buckets. We spread them on the workbench in the woodshed to cure. We will keep digging all this week. It looks like we’ve had a good potato crop this year.
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| Cleaning out the long border. |
Thursday I was in school again and after school, again, I continued to work on the long border. Over the next weeks, I will keep at it, making my way down one side and then the other. After rain tomorrow, it looks like the rest of the week we’ll have perfect working weather. That’s good because I’m starting to feel a bit of urgency to get as much done as quickly as I can. I saw what The Farmer’s Almanac and The Old Farmer’s Almanac are predicting for the winter of 2022-23 and, although they sometimes disagree, this winter they do not, hence the urgency. The Farmer’s Almanac says:
“According to our extended forecasts, this winter season will have plenty of snow, rain, and mush—as well as some record-breaking cold temperatures! We are warning readers to get ready to “Shake, shiver, and shovel!” The first bite of winter should come earlier than last year’s. December 2022 looks stormy and cold nationwide with an active storm pattern developing and hanging around for most of the season over the eastern half of the country.”
And The Old Farmer’s Almanac says:
“The eastern half of the U.S. should brace for potentially record-breaking cold to define the season. This frigid forecast extends to the Deep South and Texas, which could see the mercury diving as much as 8̊ F below normal! Specifically: Winter temperatures will be colder than normal across much of the country between the East Coast and Rockies. Snowfall will be greater than normal from central New England through northern North Carolina, from the Lower Great Lakes and the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys into the southern Plains, from the northern Plains into eastern Washington, and across the higher terrain of the southern Rockies and California. Freezing temperatures will also bring above-average snow totals to most areas in the eastern U.S. that typically experience snowfall.”
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| The first wooly-bear I've seen. |
I was not in school on Friday. It was a brisk 36° when I went out on my morning walk. There was low fog sitting over the beaver pond and the grass was drenched with dew. I was soaked to the knees by the time I came in. I knew the day was going to be sunny and warm and I had plans to work in the garden, but while waiting for the dew to dry, I made jam – a batch of blueberry and a batch of triple berry (strawberry-blueberry-raspberry). It was a pleasant, fragrant, steamy way to spend the morning.
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| Friday morning. |
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| Two batches of jam and two loaves of Miriam's sourdough bread. |
Once the dew was dry, I went outdoors and stayed there until the afternoon. I picked raspberries. They are almost done for the season, but there were still some nice berries. We were going to the Thayn’s for the weekend and I wanted to take them some things from the garden. I dug up some potatoes. I cut a head of cabbage. I selected some onions. I put it all in a box along with some of my newly made jam. Then I continued my work in the long border. I’m amazed at the volume of plants, mostly weeds, that I pulled up. I was also pleased to see that the colchicum are starting to bloom. Although there are still other flowers hanging on here and there, the colchicums are the last flowers to begin blooming this late in the season. I love their bright pink flowers that seem to erupt from the ground.
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| Colchicums in the garden. |
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| More colchicums. |
We left for the Thayn’s house at 3:00 and arrived at 7:00 in time for pizza for dinner, a game, and then bed. Saturday was a busy day. Mabel had a soccer game in the morning. After that Miriam, Hannah, and June went to the Highland Festival over in Ligonier and the rest of us stayed and went to Hazel’s soccer game. Later that afternoon, we went to a Fall Festival. Some of us rode rides and we walked around among the vendors. When we were all together again that evening, we celebrated Hazel’s birthday. She turns ten on Tuesday. It’s hard for me to believe she’s that old already.
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| At Mabel's soccer game. |
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| Florence the cheerleader. |
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| The Fall Festival. |
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| The girls touring an ambulance at the Fall Festival. |
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| Hazel's birthday. |
Today we went to church and when we got back we had lunch. We video chatted with my parents and Hollie for a bit since we were all there. And then it was time to drive home. It was a short visit at the Thayn’s, but we’ll be together again in two weeks. Now we're home and tired from the long drive. It was just getting dark and it started to rain as we were driving into Gold. The night is still warm and I can smell the night-blooming jasmine still in bloom on the back porch stairs. I still haven’t gone down to close the barn. It’s good to be home. I have the week’s work planned out in my head. We’ll see how it goes.
