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Summer's Lingering Into Fall
Last edited Wed Oct 2, 2013, 01:13 PM - Edit history (1)
I KNOW it's only been Fall here for a handful of days, but it's absolutely gorgeous outside. It's normally the time of year where you look around your yard and garden and almost wish for all of the eaten and declining perennials to slip into sleep for the winter, to emerge renewed for the next summer's pageant of new leaf and blossom.
This is the season where the dying leaves and other foliage reduce our outdoor palette to essential colors of the earth; the yellows and reds stark against the sharp blue sky, merging together to produce orange and golden hues to highlight the lingering and evergreen trees, bushes, and grasses laden with seeds and berries.
This year, we've barely gone below 70 degrees during the day and above 50 degrees at night. Most of the green is still evident all around, with an occasional dogwood already cutting through the defiant stands of emerald with their leaves dominating their space with a fiery amber that heralds the inevitable hibernation of their reluctant neighbors.
There are still phlox in bloom, accented by a sprinkle of miniature goldenrod and scattered reddened flower heads of autumn sedum and lantana against the paisley colors of the coleus; made bolder and more vivid by the rays of the autumn sun and the chilly nights which crisps everything and hardens it against the decline of this year's abundant growing season.
Soon the oak leaf hydrangeas, Japanese maples, hazelnuts, and other autumn performers will vie for attention with their own scarlet resignations to the winter cold. Yet, for now, most everything looks unusually content in playing Summer as they take advantage of the relaxing, stress-free, temperate air and reflect on their longevity; imagining that they could go on like this forever, like the plants that I bring inside every Winter to both selfishly and obligingly keep them safe and preserve them for yet another season out in the garden.
Now that the mosquitoes are gone I've taken to sitting every morning for about an hour or so in the one spot that the sun manages to shine through the thick canopy and light up a secluded spot on the front steps, tucked in there away from prying eyes that might frown on the occasional pungent smoke that escapes my efforts to hold it all in between sips of my piping hot coffee.
It's not long before I'm joined by my catbird friend who has put aside his melodious mimicries and adopted a persistent whine and cry which has broken my solitude each and every time I've sought refuge there. He cries to me in between mouthfuls of beautyberries - maybe not ripe enough for him; they're usually ripened fully by now, but the season's stretch has allowed them a later bloom and fruit - I imagine that he's missing his friends who haven't been around since the first chill winds blew through the town about a month ago.
I tell him, softly, that he needs to get going - maybe he can hook up with the other lone male who grudgingly answers his lonely whine and cry and fly the coop to warmer tundra. More and more of his bird friends have stopped making their yearly journey south; at least not as far down as before; and are wintering over nearby. The cardinals have always been a bit stalwart; and there's the gang of starlings and an assorted sparrow and dove who come in a couple of motley groups to my patio every day all winter on their feeding rounds to advantage themselves of the seed that I sprinkle almost daily everywhere I can find a surface to scatter it .
His buddies, the wrens and the cardinals made a daily habit of coming to my open front and back doors to warn me as excitedly as they were able whenever the fox or one of the neighborhood cats were around, or whenever one of the resident hawk threatened. I'd come out and pretend that I was keeping order with a stern word or two to the open air.
"Whaa, whaa!" he cries to me, though his mouth stuffed with purple fruit.
"Whaa, Whaaa!" I cry back. Give me a moment of solitude. I threw a handful of dirt at the bush yesterday and he flew away. Today, he came back, crying; flew away; and, came back, anyway, to register his anxiety and relate to me his loneliness and apprehension over the changing season and his tardy departure.
I'm sympathetic, but not very welcoming. He might well be the annoying character who showed up early in the Spring and disrupted the neighborhood with his monotonous and piercing whistling for his companion's return.
Also making an appearance in my neighborhood this season are the greying and white-haired ladies, likely from the Friends community nearby, standing on the busy street corner with their signs saying, "War is not the Answer!" and "Stop War!" They've emerged to make their inharmonious display of resistance to match with the predictable and almost perennial calls from our government and military for armed conflict and state-sponsored violence abroad.
Behind me, above the steps where I sit, the faded banner still hangs as a flag on my home; the banner with the painted peace sign of red, yellow, and blue that I held along with many of these same folks, on those same street corners, when Bush was pressing his own case for war and imperialism across sovereign borders.
Small comfort to see this one war's banner fade; just in time to find yet others' hastily, but diligently assembled once more to challenge and influence this government's insistence on flaunting their devastating weapons and other instigations of war against nations which haven't actually threatened us at all.
I read someone the other day who was mocking Code Peace for their belief that their efforts were contributing to the efforts toward peaceful settlement of the conflict our president has chosen to highlight and employ our diplomatic and military resources and manpower. Small comfort to see this perennial pageant of protest perhaps, but definitely a comfort, nonetheless.
The ladies have assembled on the corner of one of the most scenic roads in the area. I remember driving down the dark country road as a youth on the way to one of the concerts at a pavilion nearby. I had the improbable dream of living off of that scenic drive all the way through my impoverished years, and have, amazingly, settled into one of the homes tucked away down one of the mysterious and intriguing streets which branch off into the wooded acreage on both sides of the winding drive.
I wish you could gather up all of the beauty and color of Autumn in our neighborhood and hold it close and dear; eat it up like some hippie candy. I used to drive my Alzheimer-riddled dad up and down that picturesque road in the green Ford truck that now sits as an unmovable part of the landscape of our yard, as slow as I was able to afford him a lingering look at the passing scenery which he looked upon and remarked on as if he was a child reborn; from another country or another world . . .
"Everything's so clean," he would say, as he looked smilingly out of the truck window as Adam Duritz of the 'Counting Crows' (our boy, as he called him) was belting out 'Sullivan Street," or; John Hiatt soulfully counseling that 'my voice would not command'; or, Lyle Lovett covering Townes Van Zandt's 'Step Inside This House, or 'Flying Shoes'. We took our very last drive together down that road as I took him to his first day at the nursing home I'd found to care for him when I was no longer able.
Lyle would be singing . . .
"Day's full of rain
The sky's coming down again
I get so tired
Of these same old blues
Same old song
And baby it won't be long
'Til I'll be tying on
My flyin' shoes . . .
The spring only sighed
The summer had to be satisfied
The fall is a feeling that I
I just can't lose
I'd like to stay
And maybe watch a winter day
And turn the green water
To white and blue"
We'd fly down that country road with it's fall display of color and roll up on our beautiful home of contentment, and of endless days like summer Sundays rolling slowly to church in the quiet early morning.
"Step inside my house Babe
I'll sing for you a song
I'll tell you 'bout where I've been
It shouldn't take too long
I'll show you all the things I own
My treasures you might say
Couldn't be more'n ten dollars worth
But they brighten up my day
Well that's about all I own
And all I care to I guess
Except this pair of boots
And that funny yellow vest
And that leather jacket and leather bag
And hat hangin' on the wall
Just so it's not too much to carry
Could I see you again next Fall . . .?"
19 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Looking forward to more of the same... 
Nice garden!
. . . at least that's how I imagine it down there in the Sunshine State.
and gorgeous photos.
Thanks for sharing this! 's
. . . thanks for sharing it with me. 
. . . and my garden thanks you, as well.
What an absolute joy to read. 
Fabulous garden.
Thank you so much for sharing, you made my day. 
I don't know whether it's because the calendar says October and I'm thinking fall or if I just happened to notice all the color still left over from summer.
I still have azaleas and roses blooming among other things.
Beautiful OP!
