The changing of seasons usually prompts me to write. Well, truthfully, looking out the window prompts me to write. But Fall seems to signal the closing of another year. Not quite closing – we’ll save that until November, when the area really looks bleak – dark and damp, trees standing naked with the leaves gone. I’ve often thought that trees in November look particularly forlorn, almost embarrassed to be seen until the snows come and dresses them up a bit.
There are so many things to look forward to in the Fall – like the leaves turning. There are a bunch of craft fairs in the area, the left-overs from the summer tourists. We haven’t bought anything in quite some time. In all honesty, we have way more bits and bobbles than we can reasonably display without looking like those gift shops that smell of spices and wood smoke, and are so full of stuff you don’t know where to look. Merchants have blurred the fall flavors – I bought some Pumpkin Spice coffee last week, and it was on sale! Of course, the roll-out this year was in August, so by now, the thrill of that first cup is long gone. Even the pumpkins made an early appearance, and by now, the stores are full of fall gourds and decorative accents. Halloween candy and decorations arrived in the grocery store weeks ago. When I get around to thinking about buying it, it’ll be long gone.
During the summer months, a great variety of fruits and vegetables come into of season to tempt us – strawberries and blueberries, corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes, different varieties of squash. Can’t wait for the “native” tomatoes to appear. They’re always big, intensely red, intense flavor, and you have to check them top and bottom to make sure they didn’t drop and the insects got them. That’s why I don’t grow my own. There’s that nanosecond window when they fully ripen and then fall on the ground for some animal to take a bite or a bird sampled them. I tried to grow some in containers on the deck one year. That merely brought our winged and four-legged visitors up close and personal – won’t be doing that again. But fall brings out the remarkable as the squash family, along with colorful gourds, strut grandly onto the produce runway. There are big blue ones, which I remember from my youth – we never ate them but others had them in the garden, some tans, yellow, and oranges. My mother was a big fan of turnip too, but it’s not terribly popular around here so I don’t buy it. Some gourds are so colorful and interesting with bumps and spots that they look almost artificial. I know – forget I said that.
Fall is, for many of us, that last true burst of color before everything fades to white and grays. The trees in New England are on dramatic display. That’s probably why Columbus selected October for his holiday, although he didn’t travel far enough north to see the trees. Now, his day has been renamed “Indigenous Peoples Day”, which, reading the details of his arrival and first interaction with the natives, it wasn’t a happy merger. Probably some bureaucrat or politician somewhere along the way said, “Look – there’s nothing in October. Let’s have a holiday for Columbus there.” The idea took off until the protests erupted, and well, you know the rest. But it’s the first real opportunity for people to over-decorate their houses since Independence Day. Labor Day has no really decorative opportunities, although some left their flags and bunting out from since July and stocked up on fireworks. Every store is now full of chrysanthemums – from the nurseries to hardware and grocery stores. As a gardener, it saddens me when, in mid-August, I see rows and rows of mums appearing, laid out like little soldiers in the nurseries. I don’t particularly like them and gravitate more toward asters, but truth be told, I’m not overfond of either. Mums look spectacular for about a week, then you have to keep picking off all the dead blossoms to keep them looking ok. Unlike other flowering plants, each mum has thousands of blossoms, and they wilt remarkably quickly. If they were fruit, they’d be bananas. Who has the time to pick them over? And they have tender stalks, so they break when you just look at them.
Fall also is a season for apples. It wouldn’t be Fall unless I did my salute to apples. Here in the land of orchards, apples, like mums, are everywhere. Apple spice this, apple spice that, going neck and neck with the pumpkin. Every year, I look forward to “apple cider donuts” I think it’s the name that has such cache, because the donuts themselves never quite reach expectations. The flavors don’t really leap out at you, and they seem to dry out and crumble faster than homemade cookies. Never mind, I buy and eat them anyway, just so I can say I’ve had them. Elizabeth and I were out at the orchard store (it’s a huge farm store attached to the largest orchards in the area) and bought a bag of Mackintosh. I’m told they’re the best for Apple Crisp and Apple Brown Betty. I’m not exactly sure how Brown Betty came by her desserts, but she’s a legend. I do hope I’m not saying anything culturally insensitive here. Last fall, Elizabeth asked me to pick up a bag of Honey Crisp apples, because, as she told me, and Elizabeth is nothing if not high-end, they are superior for, well, whatever she’s baking. I picked up what I thought was a smallish bag. I got to the cashier, who smiled pleasantly at me and said, “That will be $21.55.” In disbelief, I pulled a twenty from my pocket and realized that wasn’t enough. I guess apple prices are set by pharmaceutical or oil companies.
Mixed with the sense of peace that descends in the Fall, it’s also a time of longing. Coffee and my newspaper on the screened porch won’t be a “thing” again until May. The outdoor plants are looking quite pathetic – straggly, wilted brown around the edges – and I say to myself, we only have a few more weeks to enjoy what’s left, so I don’t have the energy to do anything about them. If you’ve ever watched “Gardener’s World”, and I do, Monty is telling us all what we should be doing to “put our gardens to bed.” I don’t do any of it. I just watch them all decay. Spring is soon enough to clip and clean. This is a time that we put away the patio umbrellas, the wicker chairs, the porch rockers. Had to do it early this year as the folks came to power wash and re-stain. Had to put everything away early. As I “mature”, I’ve bought winter covers for much of the furniture so I don’t have to carry it to the basement. It’s the season for putting out mousetraps in the basement, putting down the storm windows, hearing flocks of geese honking on their way south, thinking about hunkering down. Seeing where I put my winter boots and if I have any pairs of gloves that match. Do I have the snow shovel and ice melt ready? It’s been unseasonably warm this year – we’re still using the air conditioning, but the heat will be fired up as soon as I can slip that by Her Ladyship. Many from around here head south to enjoy the last few weeks of hurricane season, which seems to be expanding to accommodate their arrival. I’ll be putting on fleeces over jerseys soon enough, so you know the weather is turning. Flannel shirts and sweaters won’t be far behind. And the magic of Fall will be gone.
I'm Thinking...No! 