“Well, the frost is on the pumpkin and the hay is in the barn…”

It’s the final day of November and time for me to admit that Autumn is waning. The “Season of Giving” has been poking at me since July and now that Thanksgiving is over, I guess I’m ready to embrace it.

Adieu, Autumn.

[Pumpkins Experiencing Life by Lana Gits.]

While We Walked

Each photograph here is from an autumnal stroll through our ’hood.

Some milkweed pods caught our attention one day and, upon closer inspection, my husband noticed the array of colorful bugs.

Hedge-apple trees were plentiful in the country when I was young and somehow they’ve stuck with me as something wholesome and good. Lucky for me I don’t have to travel to the country to find them anymore. Our neighbors have one in their yard! They create fall arrangements with the fruit.




This past weekend we walked down a street that was breathtakingly golden. The sun illuminated both the leaves still clinging to branches and those that carpeted the ground and sidewalks. Nothing but ginkgo leaves and fruits for an entire block, yet the street sign read “Catalpa.”

What do you see in your neighborhood this week?

A Perfect Month

Take in the season as much as it lets you. Touch it, smell it, breathe it in. October never disappoints.

“Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.”
—Carol Bishop Hipps

[Photo from Free Kibble; photographer unknown.]

Autumnal Pleasures

“I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

I’m with you, Mr. Hawthorne. Hence my spontaneous afternoon trip to a wildlife sanctuary on Friday. My husband and I chose a short hike through a meadow.

At first glance, it didn’t look like much. No trees boasting spectacular oranges and reds, no large, foraging mammals to watch.

But if you paid attention, the fields were full of subtle color and fragrance, and the air was alive with busy insects—myriad kinds of bees, butterflies, and grasshoppers. Transformations of texture surrounded us: bright flower petals were now downy seed transports, supple grass blades had become whispering dry stalks, once-green seed pods hung brittle and brown from trees.

Wherever you are, I hope you, too, get a chance to explore the sunshine and creations of the season.

Of Leaves and Leavings

Autumn begins today.

Actually, autumn has been lurking here since two days before the summer solstice. Some leaves changed hue or texture; others fell from their trees. The extreme weather conditions have confused the seasons and it’s anybody’s guess how the coming seasons will unfold.

I adore autumn, so naturally I want it to continue for months and months. But I’ll take it however I can get it.

[Camofleur by William Wegman.]

A Moment Suspended

After seeing the autumnal splendors from Natural Bridge last year, we met this little fellow (gal?) on the path back to our car. He appeared to be teetering between life and the next life, so we moved him closer to the woods for a calmer transition.

“Uh-oh. What are you about to do?”

But not before we took some photos of him, which, in spite of his condition, he managed to blur or escape the frame each time. I regret taking advantage of him that way, though I like to think that we gave him a better end than getting stepped on by other tourists.

“Knock it off with that picture-snappin’, boyo. I mean it!”

Watching him—his vivid green, his leafy shape, his tense determination—was a near-perfect end to our afternoon.

“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Deck the Halls with … Pumpkins?

I realize Christmas is just around the corner. Retailer music has been reminding me since October. But the tall, strangely narrow pumpkins that grace my window ledges still look so great that I don’t have the heart to remove them.

I paid WAY too much for the pumpkins, and the woman selling them knew it. Then she warmed to me and started telling me about her life.

She raised her daughters the “Country Way”—that is, to be self-sufficient without electricity, plumbing, and running water. When she married, she told her husband she’d do anything for him except cook chicken. She’d had enough of it, for it was her job at the tender age of 6 to kill three chickens every morning. Her uncle—who, with his wife, raised her and her many older brothers—loved to eat chicken. It was served every day for breakfast and supper; the children were spared chicken for lunch because they ate at school.

From this point, the tale turned dark and uncomfortable as it focused on the wrath and unsavory desires of the uncle. While the woman shared the grim details of her hardscrabble upbringing, she insisted on cleaning my pumpkins in bleach water—“They’ll last longer.”

She was right. Those pumpkins look as shiny new and orange as they did the day I bought them. And really, with the woman’s storytelling thrown in, I got a bargain.

Even so, I’ve grown accustomed to their Stan Laurel–like visages outside my windows. I’m thinking a couple of Santa hats atop them could help their transition to the next holiday.

Seasonal Surprises, Seasonal Dividends

now visited us today for the first time. Fleetingly. It left before I had time to get excited about it.

I wonder if the rain, which has pelted us nonstop for days, was as tired of itself as we were of it and decided to try a new look.

Or perhaps the snowflakes, confused by the glut of Christmas decorations displayed since October, raced here today for what they thought was a late entrance. Realizing their mistake after materializing, they disappeared.

Either way, I’m happy to be sans precipitation this afternoon. I’m grateful for this lovely long Autumn of the Bluegrass—for being able to dress in layers rather than hauling out the thick woolens, for being comfortable enough to sit in the yard enjoying a book and hot tea, for the slow departure of color giving way to a splendor of texture in the form of nuts, berries, and seed pods.

“Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed—if we only knew it! What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons!”
—James Russell Lowell

[S from Industry.]

Parallel Seasons

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
—Albert Camus

O, That I Could Fly!

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
—George Eliot

[Art by Gustav Klimt.]

Autumnal Clues in the Bluegrass

Autumn has officially arrived. Yet my husband and I suspected it was on its way a couple of weeks ago.

As we strolled through our neighborhood, we noticed new colors and textures dotting the trees. They were preparing—impressively, I thought—for seasonal change. I tried to capture some of their splendor on my phone for you.

“Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.”
—George Meredith, in “Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn”

How Do You Encourage Unwelcome House Guests to Say Goodbye?

As I was making my coffee the other morning, I noticed that I had company.

At first glance, I thought it was a huge daddy longlegs, which brought back a rush of fond childhood memories. On closer inspection, I realized it was not.

It had long legs alright, but it also had pronounced yellow and black stripes on its body just above the legs and it was in the middle of a construction project. Were I to allow it to continue its task, my kitchen would soon become a mere element of the spider's grand design. I had to act quickly.

I grabbed a nearby freezer bag, enticed the creature into it, and escorted it outside. It took a bit of bag-shaking to encourage the spider to leave—it had continued its web construction inside the bag. But I succeeded.

This confusion of habitat happens with every change of seasons. And I prefer to gently remind the confused that their habitat is outside mine.

But I have to confess that the heebie-jeebies some critters give me make me murderous. Clothes moths, for instance. See an infestation of those in a favorite cashmere sweater and you'd know what I mean. I can't kill those guys fast enough. I'm itching right now just

writing about them. The other icky things that I'm not nice to are silverfish and those million-leg bugs.

I'm sorry, truly sorry that I don't have it in me to be kind to all the world's creatures. But these three freak me out (which is why they don't get accompanying photos in this article). Last night, out of the corner of my naked (sans glasses) eye, I noticed what I thought was a mouse in the bathroom. I thought it odd that it was in the tub, so I moved in for a closer look.

AAAAAAAACK!

It was one of the million-leg critters! I ran to the kitchen, picked up a tea kettle of water, and drove him toward the drain in a torrent. Every little leg curled up and I considered the mission accomplished.

Fast-forward to this morning: same bathroom, same flash out of the corner of my eye.

AAAAAAAACK! It's BA-AAAACK!

The mouse-sized bug had recovered. I ran from the bathroom because the tea kettle was whistling. And because I didn't know what Plan B would be.

Still don't.

I'd read once that the larger those bugs are, the older they are. This guy must have a few thousand years on him. How can I wipe out all that history? (Ha! I'm trying to imagine something good about the bug and in my mind's eye suddenly saw it posing for a women's footwear ad, each little leg snugly fitting into a different couture shoe.)

I'll let you know if I figure it out.

Take Time to Stop and Smell the Moonflower

It's the first day of a new month.

My husband and I used to celebrate our relationship on the first day of every month, with a larger annual celebration on April 1st. But then we got married after 25 years of testing our cohabitability and confused ourselves about which dates to honor. All of them, you say? You're probably right.

For my pooch, the first day of a new month means taking the dreaded heartworm medication.

But today is the first day of a special month: September. For many children, it's the end of freedom and the beginning of school. (When I was a kid, I could hardly wait for summer to end and homework to begin.) Here in the Midwest, today marks the onset of a new and colorful season. (The tree outside my sunporch window already bears swaths of yellow leaves.)

Autumn is the season I can't get enough of. But I fear that this year, more than previous years, the atypical weather we've been having is going to strip the trees of their leaves early and we'll have extra snowless, gray days to stretch out our Winter. 

So I have to make every outing with the pooch count: Make her go to the park instead of walking around the block, try to catch each change of hue as it happens, notice the shifts in sunlight. 

Of course, this is a moot point if she whines and groans me awake at 4 o'clock in the morning as she did today, in which case I keep my eyes peeled for smarmy characters in the shadows. However, if we end up headed west on one block, we pass a large bush of "moonflowers." The intensely fragrant blossoms open only at night—and only once. I'm many decades into my life and this is the first moonflower I've ever seen. I try to savor it whenever I can.

Happy September 1st to you, dear reader!