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Category: seasons

Autumn Planting

Autumn Planting

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There’s a delicious irony in autumn planting, a slap in the face to fall. All around me leaves are yellowing, dying, flaming out, and here I am plying the soil, ripping out the summer flowers, putting fall ones in their place.

I chose mums and ornamental cabbage, hearty plants that can bear a hard freeze and stff wind. I forgo the pretty pansies with their thin stems and hopeful faces.

Planting in the fall is a vote for life. It’s thumbing my nose at winter, saying (if only to myself) maybe it won’t be as bad this year.

Changing of the Guard

Changing of the Guard

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The small peeps of the hummingbird have given way to the eponymous “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” of that small bird. The chickadees will be with us all winter, and if last year was any indication, other birds will crowd the feeder and suet block: cardinals, grackles, woodpeckers, maybe even a bluebird or two.

But I’ll miss the hummingbirds, their aerial displays, the way they dive-bomb each other, claiming all the nectar for their own. I’ll miss seeing their tiny outlines as they perch on the wire of the tomato cage. Who knew they could perch?  They seem the very embodiment of perpetual motion.

Now they’re whirring their way to their winter destination in Central America, propelling their impossibly tiny bodies across the Gulf of Mexico fortified with nectar, insects and what I can only think of as hope.

Equinox

Equinox

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It was a day of balancing — darkness and light, summer and fall. And for me, a day of driving eight and a half hours from Kentucky to Virginia.

Fall comes early in the higher elevations, and the hills were brushed with yellow. Yellow from the thinning trees, from the just-turning leaves, from the goldenrod. Yellow set off by the shaggy gray limestone cliffs that line the road.

A drive is a balancing act, too, a passage from one place to another, holding each in mind as you pass between the two.

View from a Hammock

View from a Hammock

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Speaking of (pictures of) hammocks, I spent some time in one yesterday. I’d been looking at it longingly all week but there was no time to partake. The weather was summer but the work load was decidedly back-to-school. By this weekend, though, with a big project completed and the house (relatively) clean, I had no choice but to relax.

It’s funny that hammocks are so often the symbol of carefree existence. Perhaps it’s their weightlessness or their airiness, the fact that they swing.

Or maybe it’s their contours and mechanics. While I’ve often heard of folks flopping into a hammock, you cannot flop into mine. The contraption is not easy to get into or out of. In that sense it holds me captive. Once I get into it, am I  really going to try and get out very quickly?

Take yesterday, for instance, I had my pillow, my journal, a book, a phone and of course, the requisite glass of iced tea. Imagine the logistics of assembling all that within arm’s reach. I didn’t stir for an hour. Then again, why would I want to?

Wearing White

Wearing White

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While not a fashion traditionalist in most ways (I’m writing this in a work skirt and tennis shoes), I do have a thing about wearing white after Labor Day.

It’s a dictum that originates from my earliest years, from the same place as skirt and sweater sets and little white gloves for dancing school. From a time when there were rules and penalties (a withering glance, an averted head) for breaking them.

Those have gone away, of course — the rules and the penalties — but wearing white after Labor Day … Well, that’s a tough one to break. So white skirt and pants are tucked away for next year. White blouses and shirts, they’re allowed, of course. I’m wearing one right now. A way to keep the flickering flame of summer burning brightly a few more weeks.

(In no hurry for this kind of white.)

This Feather Floating

This Feather Floating

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This hour along the valley this light at the end
of summer lengthening before it begins to go
W.S. Merwin, Seasons

I read these lines this morning and find in them some consolation for the days that are passing, that are spinning us so surely into fall.

For how better to face the next turn than to capture what is fleeting, to pin it down on the page?

this whisper in the tawny grass this feather floating
       in the air this house of half a life or so

Summer Radio

Summer Radio

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I had forgotten what it was like —the splash of pool or surf, laughter in the distance and always, always the radio. In many ways it was the sound of summer, the low simmer of pop tunes from the transistor.

With the advent of the Walkman decades ago and for many years now the iPod, music is only in our  ears and not our neighbor’s. But this week I’ve lounged beside a pool and listened to tunes from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Can’t remember the songs themselves; they weren’t important. It was the whole experience: the scent of sunscreen, the movement of breeze, the heat of the sun. The radio sounds just completed the circle.

It’s the sort of summer I always remember, and this year it’s summer still.

Open House

Open House

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Common sense tells me to turn on the air conditioning. It will be in the low nineties today, high humidity. But another impulse keeps it off, a desire to be one with the summer, to feel the heat, to be cooled by fans and not refrigerated air.

And I think the house likes it, too. The wood swells, the plants thrive. Paper softens and curls. Deck doors are thrown open so the outside comes in.

A breeze flows through from back to front. A chorus of cicada song rises and falls, and because the windows are open I can hear it.

Summer is best in an open house.

The Berries

The Berries

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Summer begins today and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it than with a picture of my go-to fruit this June, local strawberries. I’ve been hunting them down like a foodie (which I am not) and with mixed success.

According to a vendor at the Reston Farmer’s Market, where I missed the berries by four hours a few weeks ago — “You have to get here by 8 if you want them,” he said, and I sauntered in there at noon! — the crop was off by at least a third this year.

And the crop was late, too. A pick-your-own place I looked into pushed back its start time by two weeks. I’m blaming both the quantity and tardiness on our harsh winter.

But I found a farmer’s market downtown, and at the last stall, a small selection of overpriced berries. I’m not saying how much these beauties cost. Let’s just say they’ve been worth every penny.

Light After Dinner

Light After Dinner

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Last night I sat on the deck after dinner watching the daylight drain away. The air was
full of moisture and I followed the bats as they darted through the air. They were invisible until they crossed a patch of still-blue sky. 
The wind picked up, moving
the tallest oak branches. They might be palms waving in a tropical
breeze, the fringed opening to an underwater cave, guardians of heaven.
As I sat there, the sky darkened and a faint star blinked
beyond the blue. Frogs sang and lightning bugs danced ever higher in the sky.
It was after 9 but I didn’t want to go inside. 
On nights like these it’s easy to believe that summer will never end, that it will always be light after dinner, that there will always be more time. None of it true, of course. But lovely to believe just the same.