Fall is getting ready to shift into winter. There’s some color left in the trees, but a little snow sifted in with the rain the other day and clung to the north-shadowed parts of the yard for a while. Like any premonition it soon passed.

last bed of bulbs going in

A few last chores stood ready for me: planting the rest of the bulbs; cutting the tops from the asparagus patch which I’d left because they were still green; raking up more leaves for the compost pile; sweeping up pine needles to mulch the blueberries; checking that the dogwood trunks are well wrapped against the deer. The buck that has moseyed through my yard for a few years now is up to eight points, and I’m sure is one of the destroyers of bark on my dogwoods, but has yet to leave any antlers in the woods for me, the ungrateful wretch.

I also had to bring in the ceramic birdbath, which is not winter-proof. It had a skim of ice this morning, and the birds did not seem to be bathing in it any more, though they were still enjoying the seedheads left standing a short distance away. Zerlina watched from the window, wearing an expression of slight alarm. She has always preferred the inanimate objects in her life to stay put unless she moves them herself.

Deer respectful of a crabapple tree

And then Sunday morning Doug and I ate the very last of the tomato crop. These were the ones I brought in green on a first-frost warning, and they have ripened nicely indoors. Even ripened this way they are much tastier than supermarket tomatoes, not being varieties bred for shipping carton survival. I cut them up and scrambled them into some eggs, and we had one last bright burst of harvest before the seasons move on to their next thing.