Seasonal Compensations

Compensation, noun - Something given or received as reparation for something lost. After a few weeks of cold, damp weather, just when I thought we were headed straight into winter with no turning back, nature compensated us with a gift. We had a week, mostly, of beautiful weather. We were treated to a classic Indian Summer – that spell of unseasonably warm, dry weather that comes after a killing frost. It was lovely and now it is gone, but I loved it while it lasted.

The last of the maple leaves.

It began with strong winds that blew in from the northwest last Sunday night. The noise of it howling woke me several times during the night. When the sun rose on Monday morning, I could see that most of the leaves were gone. Happily, in the front yard, the wind blew them away and across the road. Unhappily, in the back it blew all the leaves from the property next door into the orchard and the long border. I guess I can’t have it both ways, the same gusts both help and hinder. I love that, as the days grow shorter and the strength of the sun weakens, nature compensates us by denuding the trees. Without their leaves there is no shade and the sunshine, when we have some, floods into the house. And at night we can see the stars shining through the bare limbs. Each season brings its own boon of beauty.

Another compensation that nature has granted me are flowers in the house. Just as the outdoor world has gone blossomless, my indoor world has started to bloom. I have four potted Schlumbergera truncata plants in the northeast facing window of my bedroom. Schlumbergera are epiphytic cacti that grow up in the trees in the coastal mountains of southeastern Brazil. Most people call them by their common names, Christmas cactus or Thanksgiving cactus because they bloom around those holidays. When I first got mine, I thought they were Christmas cacti, but then they started blooming around Thanksgiving, so I thought they were Thanksgiving cacti. Every year they seem to bloom a little earlier. Now they are usually flowering around Halloween. I have three different colors – bright pink, red, and white with a pale pink blush. Two of my four plants have buds opening right now. In a good year they will bloom a second and even a third time in midwinter.

My Schlumbergeras.

The other flowers either blooming or set to bloom soon are four of my orchids. I’m crazy about orchids. I have ten of them in pots on the shelves in the music room window under grow lights. Two of them are Phalaenopsis orchids. One of them is blooming now and the other has buds. Four of them are Oncidium orchids, two of which have buds. I don’t know what one orchid is. I rescued it from a Kmart that was closing and I’ve never seen it bloom. The other three, a Foxtail orchid (Rhyncostylus gigantea), a Samurai orchid (Neofinetia faicata), and a Coconut orchid (Maxillaria tenuifolia), are fragrant and won’t bloom until February – if I’m lucky. If I were a rich man (I’m channeling Tevya right now), I’d have a large greenhouse full of orchids. They are fascinating plants. There is a real thing called Orchid Fever, an obsession for collecting orchids, that I could easily succumb to.

One of my Phalenopsis orchids.

Another seasonal compensation I’m looking forward to is having more time for books. From April to November I spend every moment I can out in the garden. I do read during those months, but the garden takes precedence and my reading is usually limited to bedtime and rainy days. Now that the gardening season is over, I will spend a lot more time reading. I always make a list of the books I want to read during the cold months and I’m always on the lookout for some new and unexpected reading adventure via recommendations or chance encounters at the library. If my body can’t be busy outdoors, then my brain will be busy indoors reading, usually while settled in by the wood stove or the furnace grate where it is warm.

A few last splashes of color: spurge.

A few last splashes of color: rugosa rose.

A few last splashes of color: blueberry.

Monday morning was clear, cold, and frosty. It was 27° at sunrise. Early that morning a trailer truck came and took away the lift the Amish used to put on our new roof. I knew there would be some additional damage to the front lawn, but it was more than I expected. After all the rain we’d had, the ground was soft and the lift left deep tire tracks as they drove it across the lawn. Being so fussy about the appearance of my yard, it was hard to witness it. And since it is so late in the season, I can’t do anything to repair it until spring. Those ruts will glare at me all winter. But I was glad to see the lift gone.

Damaged lawn.

Tuesday was when our Indian Summer began. It was warm. It was sunny. There was a lovely breeze blowing from the west. I was able to work outdoors all day. I spent several hours mowing next door. After that, I harvested the flint corn out in the big garden. We only planted two rows of it (the rest of the rows were sweet corn) and I wasn’t sure if it was ready to harvest, but the birds were eating it and I had to pick it while there was still some left to pick. As I was picking, the breeze was blowing through the patch. I love the sound it makes in the dry corn stalks. It always makes me think of a little song I learned in grade school when I hear it:

I heard the wind
in the corn one day.
And it came,
came from far away.
And it rustled the trembling corn
as if it was to say
that it could not stay,
it could never stay.

I’ve never been able to find another reference to that song. And anyone I’ve asked has never heard of it. Some of the corn was ready, but some was still a bit soft. I shucked it all and set it on the back porch to dry. If it doesn’t turn out well, I’ll feed it to the chickens.

Husked flint corn.

Drying on the back porch.

That afternoon, Ervin Gingerich came and finished work on the roof. He only had a bit of trim to do and then clean up. The house looks nice with its new roof. After he finished, I mowed the parts of the lawn that I couldn’t access while they were working. When Hannah got home, she finished mowing next door. We might still use the mower and its wagon to haul some things, but I think we’re done with mowing now.

The finished roof, west side.

North side.

Front.

Later that afternoon, Miriam, Hannah, and I worked in the big garden. We took down all the tomato supports and stored them in the big barn. We put away all the hoses. We pulled up all the dead tomato vines. We pulled up the mulch. We covered the garlic row with straw. I took a bale of straw down to the chicken coop and filled the nesting boxes and strewed the rest on the floor. The chickens love fresh straw. At the end of the day, we lit a bonfire and burned up all the debris. It was a great work day. We accomplished so much.

End of the day bonfire.

During the week, we worked on processing the bushel of apples we bought the previous week. On Monday I made applesauce out of some of the Cortland apples. I think Cortlands are the most fragrant of all the apples we’ve processed this year. As they were cooking, the house was filled with the perfect aroma of apple. I have a Cortland tree out in the orchard, but it is still young and will not bear fruit for a few more years. Later in the week, I freeze-dried the applesauce. It turned out great. We also sliced and froze the rest of the Cortland, and most of the Rome and Fuji apples. They are now in the queue to be freeze-dried. Freeze-dried apple slices have become a favorite of ours.

With the roof finished and all the equipment gone and the yard settling into quietude again, I put out the bird feeders on Tuesday evening. It’s been months since I last had them out. I watched to see how long it would take the birds to discover them. Within an hour the first visitor arrived, but it was not a bird. It was a gray squirrel and one that I recognized immediately. We call her the Great Bambina. The children gave her that name years ago, I don’t know why. She is easy to identify because she has white spots on her back. She has been visiting our bird feeders for at least five or six years. Every spring she brings her current batch of babies to the feeders. We like gray squirrels. Unlike the annoying and destructive smaller red squirrels and chipmunks, the gray squirrels are too big to get into the house through the gaps in our old stone foundation. And I find their acrobatics at the feeders amusing. By the next morning the blue jays, nuthatches, cardinals, woodpeckers, and finches were back. The feeders are back in business again. The colorful and lively birds that come to my feeders during the winter are another of nature’s compensations for the lack of colorful flowers outdoors.

Wednesday began with a beautiful sunrise. It was very still and warm. I took a walk down to the beaver pond and came back through the big garden and the orchard. The air was sweet with the rich smell of decay – fallen leaves, browning grass, damp earth. It makes a melancholy perfume. Our first task of the day was getting firewood. Miriam and I took Kurt’s truck and went to an Amish farm up near Shongo, New York, and bought a face cord of cherry wood. Later, when Stacey and Hannah got home, we loaded it onto the back porch.

Sunrise on Wednesday.

Sunrise on Wednesday.

Loading firewood.

Firewood stacked on the back porch.

Wednesday wasn’t very sunny, but it was warm and I spent the afternoon working in my raised bed garden, pulling weeds and tidying it up. In the evening, after stacking firewood, Miriam, Hannah, and I worked in the big garden again. We cleaned out the pumpkin patch. We took down the fence around the cabbage patch, rolled it up, and put it away for the winter.

The big garden almost cleaned up.

On Thursday the beautiful weather continued and we continued to enjoy working in it. It was a pleasure being out in just shirt sleeves. In many years we are in winter coats by now. Twelve years ago, we had a foot of snow on the ground by now.

Twelve years ago.

I like this year better.

After school on Friday, Miriam went and got another load of firewood. With the back porch loaded to capacity, this load got stacked on the outdoor woodpile. We should have enough firewood to get  us through January. I think we’ll get another load or two to take us into March or April.

The outdoor woodpile replenished.

Later on Friday afternoon, we tackled another big fall project – cleaning out the gutters on the house and the barn. Hannah is the one who undertakes that task. She climbed the ladder and scraped out all the rotting leaves in the gutters along the front and back porch and down at the barn. The leaves are mostly off the trees now, so the gutters should stay clear. She also placed the heating cable on the front porch roof that is supposed to keep the gutter free from ice. While she was doing that, Miriam and I put up the outdoor Christmas lights. It was a bit early, but we wanted to take advantage of the warm weather. We won’t turn them on until after Thanksgiving. And while we were busy working on those projects, Stacey harvested a load of cabbages. It was a busy and a very productive day.

Stacey's load of cabbages.

All week long, in the evenings, Miriam and Hannah carved pumpkins. They made some great jack-o-lanterns that they put on the front porch steps. The day after Halloween, they will become chicken food – the jack-o-lanterns, not Miriam and Hannah.

This year's jack-o-lanterns.

Yesterday the weather began to turn and our Indian Summer slipped away. After four days of basking in the 70s, the temperature began to drop. I drove up to Wellsville in the morning to run some errands. The weather was a swirling mess – fits of sharp rain and occasional gasps of sunshine. When the sunshine hit the hills, anyplace where there was a bit of color left seemed to glow like fire for a moment before the clouds closed and rain resumed. As I came home down the 449, I saw a pair of bald eagles. We see them often along that stretch. They like to perch in several of the big dead pines along the Genesee near where the hamlet of Harmontown used to be. I think they are a breeding pair. Bald eagles mate for life. They are beautiful birds.

Things stayed busy in spite of the weather. I went out during a lull in the rain and brought in more cabbages. This time they were red cabbages, one of the prettiest things I grow. In the house, Stacey worked at wrapping cabbages for storage, Miriam worked at processing apples for the freeze-dryer. Stacey made another batch of applesauce for the freeze-dryer. In the evening we went to the movies. We saw A Haunting in Venice, a pretty good Agatha Christie Halloween movie.

The last of the cabbages.

It’s raining again today, but with more vigor than yesterday. It woke me up in the wee hours pounding on the porch roof and pelting against the side of the house. When I look at the forecast for this week, I see snow predicted for the first time on Monday and Tuesday. It makes me groan, but with a store of firewood in place, the garden cleaned up, the gutters cleaned out, and the Christmas lights up, I feel emboldened to say, bring it on. We’re ready. But if winter wants to wait, I won’t complain.