Autumn Joy
The photo: the view from my office floor Sunday afternoon (I was stretching out my back).
The leaves are turning the most beautiful colours, orange and reds and gold, with hints of deep purple. This, of course, happens every year, except last year.
A deep cold after a hot fall turned everything brown and dead overnight. We had mud coloured leaves, frozen basil, and ruined carrots.
This year, we’re having a lingering fall, as mother nature lovingly changes the colours a little more each day. I’m trying to savour every moment, now that I know what it’s like to lose this entirely.
Maureen
Musings: apple pie bergamont fall green tomatoes mint solitude summer writing
by Maureen Bush
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Fall and Solitude
It’s fall, and we didn’t really have a summer. Last year we missed fall entirely, and this year, our summer was wet and cool. My mint and bergamont are thriving; the tomatoes are not so happy. We have a small crop of green tomatoes; we’ll chose whether to let them ripen indoors, or make green tomatoe pie. I suspect the votes in my house will be to let the tomatoes ripen, and make apple pie. We have an old apple tree with fabulous cooking apples – they make the perfect pie, if you like a pie that bites back.
Our summer was mostly upheaved, as our schedules shifted all over the place, we replaced a vehicle, and sorted through neglected corners of the house. I’m hoping with fall we’ll settle down, as everyone else is off to school and work, and I can work in solitude.
Maureen
Ode to Fall
I think it would be hard to write an Ode to Fall if fall was always like this. The leaves on the apple tree look like worn green leather. The pear outside my office window has leaves the colour of rich brown mud. I would be worried to stand under them in a rain, in case the mud ran off in brown streams. And yet, it’s strangely beautiful. The colours are muted – khaki and brown and dull gold. It’s overcast and humid, with a lovely mist this morning. The smells are rich and surprising: pears frozen and thawed again, rotting basil, the scent of dying phlox blooms carried on the wind. It feels strangely haunted.
Maureen
Fall Flowers
Fall is late here – it feels like late August, warm and mild, cold at night with a fall wind picking up, and the first leaves turning. My nasturtiums are thriving, a sure sign that we’ve had no frost yet, as it turns them to mush.
