September 21 - September 25 Harvest Moon

2010-In the course of the day yesterday I must have seen a dozen different kinds of spiders. There’s the ones who seem to be inhabiting every corner of the ceilings, busy producing even more. Then there’s the black one inside the kitchen window that hides inside the track of the storm window whenever it sees me and there’s a brown one, one of these tunnel-web making ones that I’m seeing for the first time this year, just on the other side of the glass. (Do they see each other ?) In the crook of the house outside there’s some kind of spider building webs like shelves, one over the other right up the wall.  I picked a dahlia and found a beautiful white spider sleepily crawling out from its bed in the petals. And then, while scraping paint, I disturb myriads of daddy long legs and several others.  What abundance. I want to think of them as fellow lodgers, little friends to share the day with.  Then when I see them closer up I find many have incredibly beautiful and intricate oriental rug like patterns on their backs. Each one a magnificent creature, all but invisible in our world.
The harvest moon is tomorrow night, coinciding with the Fall Equinox.  I would like to celebrate Japanese style by drinking sake and writing haiku while moon gazing.  Even last night it was bright enough to walk home by and I thought how I always wanted to live where there were no street lights.  How seldom I take the time or make the effort to appreciate that wish come true.   Last night I couldn’t help myself.

Rising harvest moon,
Baseball on the radio,
So high and outside.

I went outside yesterday to see how the storm was progressing and found myself at a loss for words to describe what was happening.  There were definite patches of blue sky at the same time soft light rain was falling out of low dark clouds. I fell in between the words rain and sun; I felt a new word was needed but more than that it seemed that my effort to fit reality into inadequate words was keeping me from seeing/experiencing what was actually there.  How can the incredible complexity of weather fit into a word or even words?  That was the first time I really saw how they could get in the way.
2011-Officially Fall. The trees are yellowish brown, the Virginia Creeper climbing the trunks is brownish red.  It is hot and wet and overcast and expected to stay this way all week--the rain totals are fourteen inches above normal. The tomatoes all blighted and died but Val brought over a bumper crop of chestnuts. The pink sunrise sky lit up misty fields of goldenrod and maroon violet grasses with accents of purple asters.  I saw it before the clouds quickly erased the scene, but my heart wasn’t in it.  There are plenty of apples though they are spotted and small.  Perhaps I’ll make apple sauce today.
2012-The days and nights are an equal twelve hours. Although it’s early, it seems the hummingbirds have been gone for a week already but I’ll keep the feeders up a bit longer, just in case. Cold nights in the forties, but no frost. I put the furnace on this morning to bring the inside temperature up from 56 to 61. I told myself it was to test the burner before they service it next week, but really it was just too cold. How many other self-serving untruths do I feed myself? A very murky unpleasant feeling that I don’t really want to look into. A suspicion that I am a sniveling, self pitying, fear ridden, judgmental pathetic specimen. Just in time for Halloween. What would my costume be? The Gollum?
2013-The leaf colors are changing quickly now and it looks to be a beautiful show this year. Now that we have an apple press we have been making cider and thinking about experimenting with other fruit-friends have pears and grapes in abundance. A series of beautiful mornings and the perfect temperature for yoga on the deck. I think I saw the last hummingbird the other morning.
 

September 15 - September 20 Flocks of Birds Gather Grain

                                          dyed using local plants along with madder and indigo

2010-Just last night I heard a flock gathered on the field just next door  though I couldn’t see them.  Perhaps they were swallows.  The harvest dominates the days now, tomatoes, apples, greens and the last squashes needing to be preserved now.  The last mowings and the garage paint scraping must be fitted in around that.  The weather has been marvelously cooperative though and the only limit to what gets done is my energy.  I noticed as I was tossing the fallen apples out of the way when I mowed under the tree that there were none of the yellow and black sugar loving bees that can be such pests at this time of year, especially when I’m cutting up apples outside,  None.  Is that a natural fluctuation or another sign of environmental harm?
2012-Something I’ve never seen-a flock of two dozen or so blue jays, raucous and marauding, clustered on the trees and houseplants, pecking something out of the dirt. I’ve wondered in the past why I never felt more awe at such a sky blue bird, but in a group like this they were amazing and tropically unusual as a flock of brightly colored parrots.
I’m feeling the need to get involved with plants more, leading me back to experimenting with dyeing wool with them. So far I’ve tried dock root, elderberries, knotweed and achiote (from the supermarket). Poke berries, amaranth and goldenrod in the works.
 Pounds of string beans this year though the cucumbers and tomatoes have died back with what I fear is blight of some kind. Making pesto today and minestrone with green beans, limas, tomatoes, chard, kale, leeks, garlic, peppers and little spears of broccoli, all from the garden. The squash was a disaster this year, weakened by drought because I tried them in the front bed which is too clayey to be kept watered. They had slugs, squash bugs and vine borers. I guess its amazing I got the few I did. The cardoons were attracting tons of those striped bees for some reason, I even stepped on one, though there are no apples (or pears or nectarines) this year so I don’t have to worry about being bothered by them while cutting fruit outside.
2013-The same blight killed the cucumbers again, although they were flourishing earlier in the season. The squash may be affected as well. I’ve been somewhat negligent about it in the past thinking healthy plants would fight off diseases given good growing conditions but I’m convinced now that the soil is contaminated and I will have to take some measures next year.  The grafted plant experiment was not a success, both the eggplant and the tomato dying completely back early on. The black cherry tomatoes are ripening, slowly, but the heirloom ‘Stripeys” are still green. The sprouting broccoli turned out to be an interesting plant in that it yields a constant supply of small florets for cutting every day rather than the few but large heads of normal broccoli.

September 10 - September 14 First Apple Cider

                                                hops ripening on the vine

2010-It is the perfect time to be at the Jersey shore.  Saturday we went down to the water to watch the sun rise-the only time I did all summer. All the ocean sunrises I have seen over the years and I never remember a pink mist over the lilac and purple breaking waves. All these years and still something new to be seen.  The day continued perfectly  sunny but with a late summer twist- the water was warmer than the air. Then sunset on the bay side in the middle of a dreamlike bike ride; so much of time down there seems dreamlike. Sunday the sun peeked briefly through the dark clouds just at sunrise but rain followed right after. It rained about an hour but lightly and we walked on the beach anyway.  After the rain stopped it remained cloudy but warm and we stayed reading on the beach all day. Another kind of perfect.  Monday was sunny and promised to be warm but we needed to leave.  One last long walk on the high tide soft shore before tearing oneself away from summer…
2011-Rather than changing to fall colors, many trees-the maple in particular-seem to be turning straight to brown and then dropping their leaves. Two beautiful days begged me to reconsider my verdict on this season but I cannot. Except for one so far the nights have been warm enough to leave the windows open.  Last night was the full moon, the one for harvest time viewing in the Far East.  I walked down the driveway about seven thirty to find the rising moon through the trees. It was huge and orange and made the surrounding sky look royal blue.

Not much harvest but
The autumn moon still rises.
Glad when this year goes.

2013-A handful of nights flirting with frost, but no damage. We tried out the garage sale cider press with great success- a five gallon bucket of apples produced about a gallon of cider. At night I’ve been drinking last year’s apple wine-very dry and not apple-y at all-not sure which I prefer.

September 5 - September 9 Cool Nights Come to Stay

                                           A stringbean tree

2010-I’ve had to give in and close the windows at night as the temperature drops into the forties.  The bright cloudless mornings promise  a warm day but as clouds come in it may not materialize, yesterday stayed quite cool, especially while the gigantic dark grey clouds were covering the sun.  Every time it broke through was like a benediction.
Leaves have begun to color up, some ash behind the garden are showing red among the yellow and what looks like a maple at the back of the next door field is sporting orange tips in some places.
I continue bringing in and processing harvest-tomatoes, mixed greens (kale, collards and chard) string beans, squash. The scallions are yellowing but I am not sure how to keep them.  Blanched and frozen I suppose, like everything else, to be used in cooking.  The apples are not quite ready and there are not so many as last year.  The cardoons are tied up to blanch before they are harvested at the end of the month.
The hummingbirds are still here, suddenly interested in the butterfly bush and shoving the swallowtails and silverspots and monarchs out of the way. I have seen no traveling geese as of yet.
2011- A hurricane on August 28 created more havoc up here  than I have ever seen.  Trees large and small down everywhere and along with them telephone and electric wires.  There was no power for over a week and when it returned it was followed by remnants of another storm that brought days of heavy steady rain. The landline is still out. Today the sun is shining but the rivers and streams are still rising and the flood warnings continue. I was feeling disappointed in the garden this year but the feeling has deepened to almost fear. If I had thought I could replace loving a human with loving nature, now I have seen another, unexpected side. I am having a hard time; I have lost the feeling of connection.  It feels in waves, too cold, too hot, too wet; I just want to shrink away from it and back into myself. Yesterday I felt something while gathering chanterelles and noticing all the little orange newts and magical colored mushrooms; coral, oyster, boletes-(who knows what else, though I would like to learn.) But it’s like I have been disappointed in love and am sulking.
I will go out to the garden later. The string beans have begun to produce though the plants are tiny. Beets and celeriac are still small. The limas are hard to catch while they are green so maybe I will just dry them all. The are few and small, anyway. The tomatoes just burst and rot with all the water. A few squash are growing though many of the female flowers don’t seem to produce fruit. The eggplant plants look good but produce little. Some of what they do produce just drops off rotting while small. The potatoes were small and blighted, the okra barely grew, the cardoons have all shrunk away and the onions are staying small.  The cucumbers, greens, parsnips, Brussels sprouts and broccoli are doing fairly well.
2013-The praying mantises (manti?) are trying to tell me something. I’m finding them everywhere and they seem to especially like clinging to the window screens and peering into the house. There’s one on the front door, the back door, and the kitchen 2013-The praying mantises (manti?) are trying to tell me something. I’m finding them everywhere and they seem to especially like clinging to the window screens and peering into the house. There’s one on the front door, the back door, and the kitchen window. What do they want?
It’s boiling hot and humid today, summer’s last gasp perhaps but the coloring trees tell a different story.  A sad thing- a hummingbird got caught in the screen of the garden gate, but unlike the one a while ago, did not survive. I need to find another way to keep creatures out of there.

August 31 - September 4 Harvest

2010-I like the suggestion that the period between Labor Day and the equinox allows one to get used to the idea that the summer is over.  You would think that the amount of constant work required by the harvesting and processing of all the garden’s bounty would make one long for a respite and look forward to the end of the growing season.  But I like the heat and seem to have gotten more used to it than I was in July. Baking in the almost 90 degree kitchen doesn’t really bother me. What I do feel is a welling up of the grief that is always in me but is now coming to the fore, even appearing in my dreams. It seems connected to the coming of fall but I don’t know why.  It is good to have time to ease into it.
2012-This year I find myself looking forward to cooler weather. It will be possible to do some real gardening work, digging, transplanting, etc.  The front gardens are completely overgrown and neglected. The days are an even thirteen hours-hard to believe it will be an even twelve in two and a half weeks. Getting up in the dark is something I suppose I will always hate.
2013-The light is draining from these days like water through a sieve. At the reservoir I notice

Foxtail grasses glow,
Each hair clasping grains of light
Burning like sparklers.

August 26 - August 30 A Good Year for Apples

2010-It is time to come to terms with the end of summer.  These days, 90 degrees as they might be, are not July. There is a sere quality to the landscape and the smell--the smell of ripeness, almost of something cooking. The smell of dying.  The days are shortening with alarming speed.  The end of summer seems abrupt to me, but that is the product of living a school year for so long.  In reality there is no abrupt end but just the gradual day by day changes.  I try to let myself relax into them, into appreciation of them and allow myself to discover there is no impending horror (the fear bred out of dislocated memories of endless seeming frigid winters and forced labor).  This anxiety is learned and it is time to teach myself some new tricks.
2012-For the first time I am not suffering from pre-school dread. I am open to the possibility that fall may turn out to be the best season of all-the plentitude of harvest, bracing pleasant weather, and the energy to enjoy it. Someone mentions ‘the calendar of nature’ in reference to the changing activities of birds as they prepare for migration. Isn’t that what I am trying to learn to follow?
2013- I’ve been seeing a praying mantis around the place for a couple of days, and yesterday I watched it eat another insect alive, starting from the head.  Preying, indeed.