This morning my sprinkler guy, Craig, came and winterized the system. It’s pretty exciting to watch – he hooks up his air compressor, and it blows the water out of all the pipes at once, like an inverted thunderstorm. All over the yard, clouds rise out of the ground as if the woodchuck is popping open a lot of champagne.
We haven’t had a frost yet, but with the cooler temperatures and shorter hours of daylight, what flowers remain won’t need me to water them. When I moved here fifteen years ago, Labor Day was the time to bring in your tender plants before the frost. Now, Columbus Day is in plenty of time. My bougainvillea gets a spot the sunniest window.
Next up will be bringing the pillows in from the deck. You see the white puff on this one – that’s the spot where the little red squirrel has been pulling stuffing out and carrying it away. I tried to take a picture of him at it, but he was way too fast for me. I also tried to see where he was taking it, but he was too fast for that, too. My first impulse when I saw this marauder, was to save the pillow by bringing it in. Two considerations made me leave it out there: one, that taking it away would encourage him to break into another pillow, whereas leaving it might mean only this one pillow was damaged; and two, it was very entertaining to watch him pack improbable amounts of fluff into his mouth for each trip. Squirrels don’t hibernate, but build nests for warmth in the winter.
It doesn’t take a frost for the burning bushes to live up to their name. The color is glorious, and it’s very generous with its seeds, a benefit to the birds and small mammals that stay for the winter. Burning bush is not native, and in many areas is considered an invasive pest with no natural predators. Around here, though, the deer are happy to step up.
Out in the garden I still have a few zinnias, but mostly I have miniature pumpkins. I love growing them myself because they’re small enough not to overrun the garden, and I get to cut them with long stems and curlicues still attached. Here they are perched on the hearth of my fireplace, on normal size bricks for a sense of scale. I’ll go down to one of the farms this week to buy some big pumpkins – some for the house, and some to set out on the porch where, when they’re finished building nests out of my pillow, the squirrels will have a handy pumpkin snack.
I’m not complaining about the rain here. Michigan is far from the ravages of the hurricane, getting only its wispy edges as the system falls apart, and the rain – normal amounts of rain over ordinary periods of time – is necessary and appreciated. The tiny creek in my neighborhood is still a tiny creek. I’m grateful for that, and deeply sympathetic to the towns, counties, and states dealing with floods today. I wish for them a prompt return to the kind of day I walked out to in my yard this morning. Everything glowed. The burning bush was a lantern, announcing October – topiaried, as you see, by the deer. Burning bush can be invasive, but our local deer would never let that happen.
I always say that autumn is my favorite season, but really it’s the transitions from each season to the next that are my favorite places in the calendar. In honor of this occasion, I put pots of marigolds and black petunias out by the front steps. Petunias get a little goofy in rain, but they’ll have a good drink and then open back up when it’s over. Meanwhile they’re making little bats out of themselves, to go with the marigolds’ pumpkin spiciness.
Probably the biggest rain transformation is the driveway. The plain old asphalt is, this morning, an impressionist study in grey. There’s a lot to see in it – maybe North and South America? A witch with a teddy bear? The picture shifts, with the light, as I walk along. partly reflecting trees and partly tossing the light around.
The back section of the driveway has the added attraction of pine needles. A deconstructed haystack? The aftermath of a haircut? A length of houndstooth checked wool waiting to be made into a sports jacket? The little stack of logs at the far end is there to remind Edison, whose trucks have been in the neighborhood trimming trees ahead of blizzard season, not to roll their cherry-picker rig onto my septic field.
Clouds are pretty much smooth and grey while it’s raining, but after the storm they can get glorious. I hope people in the disaster zone recover soon, and reestablish happy relations with nature.
Robin Richstone 