Calm river in early fall
Autumn is a season of giving and a prelude to the fear winter brings. Gentle storms wash loosen leaves from trees, to be gathered in piles for mulching summer-parched plants. Fruits, berries, and seeds that escape the beaks of birds drop to the soil to become next year’s volunteers. Pumpkins and squash wither in the chill and spill meat and seeds when mice make holes in their softened husks. Throughout my little landscape, plants bed themselves down with needles and leaves that will cushion them when rains pound and nourish their growing roots as they sleep.
Rainbows Mean Rain
Some rain has fallen, an antidote to a terrible, dry summer with historic stretches of heat and skies smudged with wildfire ash. The rivers ran low and hot, choking fish and shutting down fishing. Berries mummified on branches and canes. If we had lived in a time before grocery stores, we would worry
about the coming winter.
Summer’s smoky skies- there are mountains behind that smog
After a couple rainstorms, plants bloom again as if spring has arrived. Grass springs back to life in the emerald green of first warmth even as the days become shorter and colder. The harvest moon looms large over the damp pasture at night as young coyotes steal under fences, hunting rabbits and voles.
Hey wait! It’s fall, not blooming time!
A late visitor- red admiral butterfly visiting a coneflower
The barn swallows left after Labor Day, tiny agile pilots navigating the incredible journey to Central America. Now snow geese are back from the opposite direction in the Arctic, their barking unmistakable on a foggy morning when they can’t be seen flying overhead. A Stellars jay has returned after the summer, with its straggling imitation of a red-tailed hawk that impresses no bird foraging in the yard. A surprise visitor appears one sunny afternoon- a red admiral butterfly apparently affixed to a coneflower bloom. It seems late for this butterfly, but with an expanding crop of nettle to lay eggs on, it may be the product of multiple hatches this year.
Open-faced dahlias continue feeding bees
Pacific chorus frogs croak from trees and shrubs on damp days. There aren’t many frog-friendly days, what with the strong El Nino that is creating havoc elsewhere. Here, we are still too dry. My cedars are flagging, and a noble fir sacrifices needles on some branches that jump out visually when they turn yellow. Fall is usually a good time to plant trees and shrubs potted and tended over the summer, but this year, my shovel turns up dust a foot deep.
As I put my landscape to bed, clean gutters, and spread gravel in paddocks, I wonder what will be left on the other side of winter. Will it be our turn for historic, destructive storms like the rest of the nation experienced this year? Will my horse with his decaying ligaments still be alive? Will the roof last, or will more windstorms peel off enough shingles to warrant an emergency repair? Will the river swell and breach the dikes with typhoon moisture from Japan, swept in on tropical winds from Hawaii? Or maybe we’ll sit parched all winter, with no snow for skiing this winter, or next summer’s river flows.
I’m always dubious about autumn- the gifts it presents are perhaps an apology for what comes next. I’m sure people from time immemorial have looked askance at autumn, unsure of what the next months would bring. For thousands of years, people must have hoped for somewhere else to be the bullseye when the monster winter storm or evil deep freeze set in. They must have flipped a coin or a chunk of bone or a point carved of rock, anything to ward off the worst of winter while they still had a chance. We’ll see. We’ll see what’s left next spring.
Autumn Sunrise
Silver Snag Studio 