Decline and Fall*

Today is the last day of summer. Tomorrow at 2:19 p.m., we will arrive at the Autumnal Equinox. The sun will cross the celestial equator and the hours of day and night will be split equally, twelve and twelve. After the equinox, the year always seems to rapidly decline. Fall is usually the shortest season here in Gold. In a good year, our falls, though brief, are glorious. The mountains and hills of Potter County are covered with hardwood forest – maple, oak, cherry, alder, ash, aspen, beech, and birch. When the conditions have been good through the spring and summer, they take on amazing colors as they move into dormancy in the fall. The transformation is already underway, has been for several weeks now, but so far it hasn't been so glorious. I'm hoping it improves.

[*Decline and Fall is the title of two books I'm familiar with, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) and Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966). I've never read Gibbon's book. It encompasses six volumes, 3,928 pages all together, that cover the years 98 to 1590 A.D. I've always been intimidated by it. I've read criticisms of it and heard it's a bit dry, plus Gibbon was not a fan of Christianity, blaming the demise of pagan Rome's glory on the rise of Christianity. The other Decline and Fall takes its title from Gibbon, but is an entirely different sort of book. It is a satirical novel set in the 1920s. Waugh was a master of satire and a wonderful writer. I've read all of his novels. He is a favorite of mine. I thought I'd borrow the title as well this week.]

We had a week of lovely weather, a fitting farewell to summer. It was hot enough to work up a sweat while laboring outdoors, but not enough to make it miserable. I like working up a sweat. We had no need to worry about frost all week and that was nice. It would have been nice to have had some rain, it was very dry, but I didn't mind it too much – except for the dust. It is so dusty. The dust from cars going up our dirt road rolls in clouds across the garden. It coats everything, plants, the house inside and out, and gives things a gray cast. I'm cleaning out the garden so it's okay if things wilt now. I only watered the tomatoes, the celery that I haven't harvested yet, and a patch of late lettuce that I'm coddling. I mowed, but only to gather and grind up the leaves on the lawn. The grass has gone brown and isn't growing much anymore. I value the leaves I mow up. I spread them in my raised beds to rot. I pile them in the compost. I dump them in the chicken yard for them to scratch through. I rake some to the edge of the road and burn them to send up the incense of autumn, a smell I love. With so many big trees on the property, we have plenty of leaves. They are a blessing, but I'm glad when they're finally gone. I don't like leaves on the lawn. It looks untidy. 

Dust

The front yard full of leaves and looking like fall.

I had appointments that took me away for a few hours on three days during the week. Acupuncture on Tuesday, a haircut on Wednesday, and the doctor on Thursday. When I wasn't away, I was out reveling in the work, enjoying the sunshine, basking in the beauty of the season.

The last big floral event of my garden year is the blooming of the colchicums. Their leaves came up in the spring, grew large, became cumbersome, and then shriveled up in early summer. Since then, there has been no sign of them. Now in the time of the equinox, their flowers are bursting from the earth, pink blossoms erupting from bare ground. It's very dramatic.

My colchicums at their peak.

Single flowered colchicums.

My favorite double flowered colchicums.

After my guinea hatchling tragedy, I have declared war on the rats in the barn. We go through a cycle with rats. They arrive inconspicuously, usually in late summer or fall when they move down from the fields that are being cut. I first notice them when they start to leave evidence, holes in the dirt floor around the foundation and under the roosting perches. By that time, they think they own the place and I have to get rid of them. Having grown up loving Charlotte's Web, I would like to think of them as being like Templeton, slightly sinister, not very likeable, but helpful in his way. They are not. They are a pest and a plague. 

Templeton and Wilbur from Charlotte's Web
by E. B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams.

Down in the barn, besides the rat invasion, nicer things are happening. The guineas are full size now and very noisy. When they hear me coming to feed them, they create quite a ruckus. I like them. The young hens in my flock have started laying eggs. I love to find their small first eggs in the nests with the older hens' big eggs.

Feeding time in the guinea pen.

Can you tell which are the young hens' eggs?

With the garden in rapid decline now, the amount of work needed actually increases. There's more to do now than in spring or summer – cleaning it up, clearing it all away, harvesting, processing, composting, tilling, and planting for next year. I worked mainly in the flowerbeds last week. My work was very systematic. I started at the low end of the long border and made my way up, tearing out unwanted plants, transplanted the ones that were growing in the wrong places. I weeded as I went. I made piles and piles of debris. When she got home from work in the afternoons, Hannah helped pick them up and haul them to the compost. We have a long-standing joke that started way back when Josiah was my chief garden helper. Whenever I had piles that needed to be hauled away, I'd yell "Josiah, hemorrhoids!" We're such a funny family.

One evening last week, I was standing out in the big garden picking (mostly eating) raspberries when a huge "v" of about fifty geese flew over. They came in low over the trees from the northeast and flew west and landed on the upper beaver pond and Burrell's pond. Hearing their cries made me happy and sad at the same time. Happy because they always sound excited to be aloft. Sad because I know they are headed south to warmer places.

The weather was nice enough that Hannah decided to power wash the house. We knew there wouldn't be too many more days like these. The white siding on the house gets dingy from the dust and the north facing side grows green algae. Hannah spent several hours on Tuesday and Wednesday after she got home from work washing it all away. She likes power washing and she does a good and thorough job. I don't like it so much and go as fast as I can when I have to do it. She'll go up a ladder to reach the high places. I will not. I don't do ladders.

Hannah power washing the house.

On Wednesday evening, Stacey and I went to the movies. In commemoration of its 60th anniversary, our local theater was showing The Sound of Music. It was the first time I'd seen it on the big screen since I saw it as a child in 1965 when my parents took me to see it in Harrisburg. I've seen it numerous times over the years since then on television screens of various sizes, but they are pretty feeble compared to the big screen. The Sound of Music has always been at the top of my list of favorite movies. When I saw Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins at the age of six in 1964, I had an immediate crush on her. When I saw her a year later at the age of seven as Maria, I fell completely in love with her. Seeing her on the big screen again on Wednesday, at the age of 67, I fell in love with her all over again. She was magnificent.

Sarah said she wanted to process some tomatoes, so Friday morning I picked some of the fancy ones from my garden and then went out to the big garden and picked more. I also picked some peppers. The tomato vines still have a lot of green fruit on them, so if the frost holds off, we can keep them on the vine to ripen. They're best when they ripen on the vine.

Tomatoes and peppers for Sarah. The ones in the blue basket are my fancy ones.

After six years of living with my sister Hollie and her family in North Carolina, my mother, who will be 97 in December, traveled yesterday to Washington state to live with my sister Nancy and her family. Hollie's husband Jim is dealing with health issues and Hollie needs to focus more of her attention on his needs, so Nancy and her husband Bob offered their home for Mom. Nancy flew to North Carolina on Thursday and then flew with my mother to Washington yesterday. Mama was nervous about traveling, she always has been, but everything went smoothly. They arrived late last night at Bob and Nancy's house. Now she'll settle into her new accommodations and Bob and Nancy will take good care of her just as Hollie and Jim have for all those years. It's a big adjustment for all of us. Now Mama will be closer to our western family, to my sister Jaynan and her family, Nancy's boys and their families, and all my western children and their families. She'll like that. But it will be strange to think of her as being so far away now.

My mother packing for her trip.

First to board the plane.

Saturday morning was a chilly 36°, but the sunrise was lovely so I went out to greet it. I walked across the front yard, through the meadow, down to the beaver pond, back along the big garden to see the pigs, back through the meadow, and home again. It was a nice, quiet way to start the day.

Crossing the front yard.

Through the meadow.

Down to the beaver pond.

Stopped to visit the pigs.

Back through the meadow to home again.

After that, the day became warmer and busier. We had several big projects going. Stacey and I ran errands in the morning. We drove up to Genesee to the building supply to buy drywall primer and then to the creamery for milk. The drive to and from Genesee was beautiful. During the rest of the day, Stacey and Miriam worked at priming the drywall in the living room. Hannah finished power washing the house. I mowed leaves off the front lawn. Then I weeded the big asparagus bed and worked in my vegetable garden cleaning things up. Hannah helped me clean up the piles I'd made. She also helped me pick pears in the orchard. Stacey also spent a lot of time in the kitchen making food for Sunday. We got a lot done. It was a good day.

On the way to Genesee.

On the way back.

Setting pears to ripen in the woodshed.

Today, after our normal two hour meetings, we stayed for a linger-longer dish-to-pass lunch and then watched the rededication of the Hill Cumorah Historical Site. Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles rededicated it. The Hill Cumorah is two and a half hours from our house. We visit it and the other historical sites in Palmyra often. We used to go to the Hill Cumorah Pageant every year until they stopped it. After they stopped the Pageant, they removed all the pageant paraphernalia and planted trees on the open part of the hill and a wild flower meadow where the seating used to be. They closed and remodeled the visitors center. Now that it is open to the public again, we plan to go up sometime this fall and check it out. It is beautiful there in the fall.

The Hill Cumorah and Visitors Center

Right after we got home from church, we drove up to the overlook to see what the fall leaves look like. It was cloudy and the air was full of dust which made things look hazy. The colors are not at their peak yet, but it won't be long. We'll drive up there again later in the week to get another look. We're supposed to finally get some rain at last starting tomorrow night and on through Thursday. I hope it's enough to wash down the dust and brighten the colors on the hills. If it's too hard a rain, it might knock the leaves down and that would be the end of our fall color spectacular. We'll see.

The hazy view from the overlook.

After church today.

Good Sabbath!