This morning cool breezes greeted us as my husband and I stepped out the front door to walk the dog. It's the second week of October. September is relegated to recent memory, with summer now the distant past. It doesn't seem fair that time should pass so quickly.
Yet the temperatures don't think it's summer. It's still in the 90s in the afternoons here. The impatiens are still blooming, but struggling with the lack of rain in this part of the country. Grass and leaves are turning brown but only because of hot and dry conditions. I've given up watering my garden, although the basil and peppers haven't completely dried up like the tomatoes. I'm going to give up on tomatoes. Year after year I plant them, water them, weed them, and receive a small handful of fruit in return.
I don't even really like tomatoes, but I envy the shrubby plants with stems drooping from the weight of laden branches that are browning in my parents' garden. Their tomatoes are rotting on the vine because they can't eat them all, and the neighbor's similarly have plenty. And they do nothing but stick seedlings in the ground! I labor for anemic tomatoes. The climate, the soil, the sun and rain, all are unpropitious for tomato growing.
Instead here I can grow rosemary, peppers to hot to eat, tradescantia, pots of aloe. Lavender seems to survive, if not quite thrive. The shrubbery -boxwoods, nandina and gaura - grow with little care. And the lantana thrives and strives to take over the entire flower bed.
But now, in mid October the plants are starting to slow their growth in response to the shortening days. The plumeria in pots still smells as fragrant as ever, and the five lemons on my potted lemon tree are finally turning yellow. One started to rot so I squeezed half in my juice, and one I picked too soon because I needed some citrus to squeeze on apples shredded for apple muffins - a recipe that only partially worked.
The bats are back, swooping over the pool for snacks at dusk. Coyotes are singing regularly at night, curling the hair on the back of our little dog, causing him to growl huskily deep in his throats, as if he'd actually frighten one of his wild cousins instead of being a tasty snack.
I have had little time for reflection, despite the fact that this time of year seems to inspire nostalgia and revisiting the past. Some of that is due to the start of the school year and the busyness of planning, grading, working. We also traveled two weekends in a row to Indiana, one for a Notre Dame football game - and a mini reunion with almost all of our kids (missing 2: the freshman in college, whom we had just dropped off two weeks prior, and the son who works an hourly wage job who couldn't take off work). We also revisited my parents and our son and daughter-in-law a couple weeks ago to honor my father's birthday and to celebrate at a baby shower the impending arrival of our first grandchild. This is something of a secret, but since this blog is also something of a secret, I'll record here my great excitement at the prospect of a new baby in the family! We have been hoping and praying for this baby!
Fitting that in fall we should celebrate a grandfather's birthday and a baby's eventual birth day. As we celebrate the fruits of the garden labor in the season of harvest, some seeds fall to the ground to take root and bring forth new life. And hopefully some seeds of wisdom will pass down to this next generation and bear fruit. Life continues to flourish, despite the harbingers of doom in the news and online. And before this month is over, I'm going to try to coax a little more life out of my raised garden bed by planting a winter garden of greens. We'll see if they can defy the odds or survive and give us some good vitamins and minerals this winter ...
3 comments:
I'm so happy to hear about this secret in-the-oven <3
As a new Grandma myself, I am so happy for you!!!
Oh, a grandbaby is just the best medicine ever! Congratulations!
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