Work, Wasps, and Reflection

On Monday, I was oddly unmotivated to work outdoors. The day began in a dreary Monday funk and, although it cleared later and was sunny, all my momentum dissolved in the morning and never recovered. Instead, I spent most of the day at my desk working on transcribing my journals. I've written about this project for the last few weeks. I've reached the point where I'm in the 90s now, and I want to get past them. They were hard years and I recorded them in so much agonizing detail. It has been quite painful at times to relive things I had forgotten. But it has also been helpful. I was frustrated and often angry during those years because I knew where I wanted to live and how I wanted to live, and I didn't know how to obtain it. Now, after miracles and the intervention of angels, I live in the place I desired, doing, for the most part, the things I hungered to do during all those frustrating years. Reading these old journals has made me more thankful for the blessings that brought us here at last. I swore when we arrived here that I would never take this place and the circumstances that brought us here for granted. Working my way through these painful journal entries has strengthened that resolve.

I still have a long way to go on this project. I have five more volumes to go before I hit January 2000, when we moved here. After 2000, I began writing a weekly update email which eventually became the Potter County Journal, and that mostly replaced my hand-written journals. I do still write in my journals, but I don't use them to record the day-to-day stuff. My hand-written journal now is for weightier and more private reflection than what I share in the PCJ.

My journals from 1975 to 1999.

On Tuesday, while walking across the front lawn on my way to the barn to do the morning chores, I smelled The Smell. It was a damp and dewy morning. The lawn was covered with fallen maple leaves. I stopped, inhaled deeply, and smiled. The damp-fallen-leaf-smell is one of the finest, most nostalgic odors I know of. As I walked, I wondered what actually makes that smell. Surely it was some magical concoction of rare volatile oils. I had to do some research to satisfy my curiosity. It turns out I was partly right. There are volatile oils involved. But most of that delightful perfume is the smell of decomposition. It is made by bacteria and fungi as they break down the leaves and, in the process, release into the air substances with unpoetic names like geosmin, and 2-methylisoborneol that give us the woody, smoky, sweet, musty smell that I love so much. It's fungi and bacteria turning this year's leaves into next year's soil. Nothing triggers stronger memories for me than smell. The scent of a particular flower, wood smoke on a chilly evening, ripe apples, so many different aromas have the power to unlock floods of memory for me.

Leaves on the lawn.

The weather on Tuesday turned gloomy, but I went out to work anyway. I pulled up the smelly stumps of harvested cabbages and broccoli. I worked on readying a bed to plant garlic. And I spent time wandering through my vegetable garden, along the long border, through the meadow, and out into the big garden, noting all the things that needed to be done that I didn't feel like doing that day. Kurt was more motivated than me. He got out his tractor and tilled parts of the big garden. Then he spent several hours mowing. I got tired just watching him. Maybe if the day had been sunny and warm, I would have felt more ambitious. I told myself that I needed to "make hay while the sun shines," as the old adage says, but the sun wasn't shining. Excuses, excuses.

Tuesday evening at 8:05 EDT, we crossed the Autumnal Equinox. I sometimes wish that when we hit these astronomical season markers there was some sort of noticeable signal. A soft "pop" would be nice. As it is, you can't really tell unless you know. The seasons seem to come and go randomly, overlapping, shifting back and forth, sometimes not showing up at all. There have been years when it seemed we never had spring or fall. One thing is certain— here, every season but winter is too short.

Wednesday was cool, but it was bright and sunny. I spent a large part of the day mowing. After that, I worked in the flowerbeds. As I worked—and I hate to confess it—I found myself almost wishing we'd have a frost. There were scraggly plants in the garden that needed to be put out of their misery, and I couldn't bring myself to do the deed. A frost would do it. But I wanted it to be a selective frost—to only kill some things, but not touch other things, like the morning glories and the zinnias. But that's not how frost works. When it comes, it is both merciful and merciless. That morning, when I looked at the national weather map, I saw that blue blob indicating frost slowly making its way south out of Canada into Minnesota, upper Michigan, the top edge of New York, and Vermont. It's coming, I thought. It won't be long.

Later in the afternoon, Miriam checked on her beehives. The smaller hive that had such a rough start is doing fine. The larger hive that was doing so good had a problem. It had been invaded by yellow-jackets. We checked with a couple of people—my brother-in-law, Bob and a lady up in Genesee who keeps bees—to see what we should do. They both said the same thing—restrict the access to the hive so the bees can defend it better, and set up yellow-jacket traps. Miriam blocked two of the three access holes with steel wool. We were told to use steel wool because the yellow-jackets will chew through everything else. She also partitioned off the half of the hive the bees hadn't yet built comb in. We ordered some traps that will arrive tomorrow.

Miriam checking her beehives.

Wednesday evening Stacey and I went to the movies. Through Stacey's negotiations, our local theater was showing, for one day only, Fathom Entertainment's movie Heaven in Stone and Glass, a documentary hosted by Bishop Robert Barron, that explores the history and spiritual significance of the French Gothic cathedrals. I was glad we got to see it. In the film Bishop Barron visits five cathedrals: Notre-Dame in Paris, Chartres, Saint-Denis, Reims, and Amiens. I have a special love for Gothic cathedrals, especially Amiens. While working on my degree in Medieval European History, I wrote a paper on the cathedral at Amiens. By the time I was done with that paper, I knew just about every inch of that magnificent building, inside and out. And I got an A+ on that paper. After our own temples, I think the Gothic cathedrals are the most magnificent sacred structures on earth. When we were in France in 2023, we saw Notre-Dame, but it was still being repaired after the catastrophic fire, and we couldn't get near it. We did get to visit Chartres. Unfortunately, we couldn't fit Amiens into our itinerary.

 

At Chartres in 2023.

The west portals of Chartres, 2023.

Thursday when I got up, the first thing I did was check the temperature. It was 29°. It was still dark out, so I couldn't see anything from the windows. I showered and dressed and waited for the light, fearing that my reckless wish on Wednesday might have come true. At dawn I went out and looked across the backyard. The lawn was covered in frost. I took a quick walk to inspect the garden. It looked bad. I retreated to the house and my desk with the heater on beside me, and waited for things to thaw before assessing the scope of the damage.

Frost at dawn on Thursday.

Frosted flowers.

By 11:00 it had warmed to 60° and I went out to have a better look. As I approached the garden, I could see from a distance that the frost had done some damage. And I could smell it. The injured plants gave off an odor as they thawed, a spongy, sweet sort of smell, herbal and sad.  It wasn't a killing frost, just a wounding one. The most exposed leaves of the morning glories were blackened. The dahlias, zinnias, and nasturtiums were crisped. Out in the big garden, the peppers took a hit. The basil suffered the worst. Everything survived, but it would have been nice if some of them hadn't.

Frosted morning glory vines.

Sad frosted basil.

Sad zinnias after they thawed.

That afternoon, I pulled up all the dry beans and hung them on the clothesline to cure for a day before shelling them. I also trimmed the last of the onions that had been hanging in the woodshed. Sitting in the woodshed, with warm sunlight shining through the windows and the warmer smell of onions in the air around me, I dozed off. I don't know how long I was asleep. I was awakened by the sound of a wasp buzzing against a window pane. After dealing with yellow-jackets a few days earlier, my first reaction was to swat and kill it, but I didn't. I caught it in a jar and let it go outside. It was a pretty wasp, metallic blue and shiny. It flew away and I went back to trimming onions. I looked it up later and found that it was a Great Black Wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus). The adult wasps eat pollen and nectar and feed their larvae with paralyzed insects like grasshoppers, which means they are a beneficial predator. So I felt noble for not killing it.

 

Trimming onions.

The Great Black Wasp (not my photo).

Beans hanging to dry.

When Stacey and Hannah got home later that afternoon, we dug up part of the big potato patch. We harvested two of the five rows and got about 200 pounds of red potatoes. 

Digging potatoes.

Sorting and bagging potatoes.

Friday was another cold and frosty morning. It was 28° at dawn. It was also foggy, as befits a fall morning. This time it was a killing frost. Things that only got singed on Thursday got fried on Friday. It was the end for the morning glories, zinnias, nasturtiums, basil, and even the potted coleus and impatiens on the front porch. My pace was quick on my morning walk. It had to be to keep warm.

Sunrise on Friday.

I worked through the day in the garden ripping out some of the frost casualties. I had quite a pile of marigolds, cleome, cornflowers, and zinnias ready to go to the compost pile. I spent an hour picking dry bean pods from the bushes I had drying on the clothesline. Sitting in the afternoon sunshine on a lovely fall day, harvesting beans seemed like quintessential late September. Later, Miriam helped me crack the pods and extract the beans.

Picking off pods.

Shelling out the beans.

Miriam checked her beehives again that afternoon and determined that the invaded hive was dead. There was no queen and only a few bees, but lots of yellow-jackets. She closed the hive. She will harvest what honey and wax she can and start it again next spring. It's sad to lose a hive like that.

That afternoon, Stacey and I went out to the Amish Bulk Food store on Fox Hill to do some shopping. We got the items we needed and then saw that they had Concord grapes for sale. We couldn't resist. We bought three boxes, a bushel and a half. They also had bins of apples. They were from New York State. We didn't buy any. I could hardly stand to look at that beautiful fruit when I had thirty apple trees in my orchard with hardly enough apples to make a pie.

Grapes from the Amish.

The Fosters and the Shilligs came for pizza that evening. After dinner we picked raspberries. The raspberries this year are more abundant than they have ever been. We have five gallons of them frozen and waiting to be transformed into jelly and sauce some chilly late autumn day.

Yesterday was one of those busy, tedious, and rewarding days. We had a long list of things to do—continue shelling beans, processing tomatoes into salsa, digging up potatoes, processing grapes, bringing in the squash from the big garden to store. And on top of all that, there were the usual Saturday chores—laundry and cleaning the house. With grapes cooking in the steamer, the house smelled wonderful. I'm way past the point where cooking tomatoes smell good, but grapes! A mouth-watering aroma. Shelling beans was tedious, but the beans are pretty and, in the end, hefting a bowlful of beans felt very rewarding.

Our processing lineup on the dining room table.

Grapes in the steamer.

Pretty beans, a variety called King of the North.

Hauling in the squash.

We ended up with four gallons of grape juice, four quarts of beans, nine pints of salsa, another four hundred pounds of potatoes, and several dozen winter squash. Kurt had his tractor out helping to dig up potatoes and when we were done with that, he went on to till the now empty parts of the garden. 

Grape juice ready to go down cellar.

Squash in the woodshed.

There was a spectacular sunset last night. Unfortunately, I only saw the very end of it when I went out to close the barn for the night. It was fading, but still beautiful. From the photos my friends posted, it was amazing earlier.

The last of what was a gorgeous sunset, so I heard.

I wish I'd gone out earlier to see it in its glory.

Today at church, Sarah and I were the speakers. I did something different for my talk. Last week Geoffrey, who is on the High Council in his stake in Utah, gave a great talk that he shared with us. When I read it, I decided I would use it as my talk today. Many of the members in our branch remember Geoffrey from his growing up years here. I thought they would appreciate hearing his talk. Plus the topic of his talk was just what I'd planned to speak on. Our talks went well. Our meetings were good. It started raining on our drive home. The trees on the hills are changing rapidly now and it really feels like fall. Lunch is almost ready. While we wait, Miriam is at the piano and Hannah has her violin and they are making music. I love afternoons like this. 

I'll have to go down and do the afternoon chores in the rain, but I don't mind. The coming week will be busy as we try to wrap up all the processing of food from our harvest. After this rainy spell, the week looks good with cool, sunny days, perfect for the work we need to do. And then it will be October.