Doug thinks of birthdays in astronomical terms. Congratulations on completing another orbit, he’ll say, and I picture myself zooming out into space, floating planet-like against a background of dark sky and bright stars, hair wafting, skirt billowing. Whereas in fact, on the evening completing this particular orbit, we were having dinner at a luxurious restaurant, consuming the products of sunlight on farm fields and pastures filtered through ten thousand years of agriculture and the hands of chefs and waiters, as anchored to earth as we could be as it rolled us through the universe.
When we look at the sky we don’t usually consider that we’re in it, even when clouds come all the way down to the ground. Sometimes we see in those clouds a metaphor for gloom, sadness, and unhappy fates; at other times an end to drought, a gift to farmers, a respite from heat. Was the storm coming or going in this photo? There was certainly a real answer, a weather map answer, at the moment the photo was taken. Lifted from its moment as a photo is, we can give it any story that suits us where we are now.
Here’s another beautiful Michigan scene, enhanced, I would say, by clouds. It’s a local farm’s You Pick flower patch in its days of former glory, gone to standing seedheads, offering nourishment to such small creatures as hang on here while we orbit through the winter. The clouds, again, connect us to the sky.
Or here are some extremely, maybe even comically, muscular clouds, seen through my workroom window in their brief existence. I expected drama from such clouds – maybe a tornado? Hailstones? Nothing happened; they dissolved into airy nothing, the natural element of clouds.
It’s an old saying, that you need clouds sometime, to appreciate the clear blue skies when they come. I say appreciate the clouds. They do wonderful things with the sun, which you can’t look at without their intercession. They decorate the sky, giving us a reason to keep our focus upward. I mean the real clouds here, but feel free to apply it as a metaphor wherever you need one. Happy orbiting.
The late warm season continues. Most of the flowers are gone, but there’s still a lot of autumn color. The spirea planted in front is mostly down to bare branches, but this one in a pot on the deck is still in glory. This is odd, first because the front yard gets more sunshine, facing south, and the deck faces north; but also because roots in the ground get more protection from weather than roots in pots do. Nature surprises us whenever she wishes. The potted spirea is a volunteer – a pot of nigella was colonized by free-range spirea seed, and quickly became too lovely to remove. Here it is garnished by a couple of immigrant maple leaves, likely carried by whatever forces brought the spirea seed.
Here’s the donor tree for those maple leaves, with just a little left in its branches to continue decorating the yard.
My herb collection has a mixed response to autumn. I had to bring the basil indoors, but thyme and sage will persevere outside all the way to Thanksgiving. The pot of mint may not last quite so long, but meanwhile has collected its own leaf embellishment.
Meanwhile, after much inspection via the internet, I ordered a memorial stone for my wonderful cat, Zerlina. Many of those offered had elaborate decorations and extensive text, but none came up to Zerlina’s level of elegance. I chose one in her colors, with a soft shape. Not that a stone will be puffy, but hard angled edges seemed wrong. Doug came out to the garden with me while I buried her ashes in the center of the garden next to the thyme, and placed the stone on top. I needed the hugs. Then I sat for a while on my glider bench, thinking about her. The thyme will spread, and maybe I’ll encourage it to surround the whole stone. I haven’t decided yet, but thyme sounds like it belongs with memorials.
Then I went back into the house, where I picked up all the pumpkins and put them back in different places. I had to remember that things can change. And I found a sort of puffy one for the hearth.
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.
Robin Richstone 