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Sharon Whitehurst: First frost musings Previous Column: Moving toward equinox, hoping for a mild autunm By Sharon Whitehurst Several days of drizzling rain, light winds, leaves drifting down. Strangely, a spell of rainy weather seems to last longer than the documented actuality. Looking over the notes I scribble in each day's calendar space, I note that we've had a mix of October weather; quite a few days have featured a sequence of sun and clouds. The black walnut trees at the bend in the lane are among the first to lose their leaves. The leaf-littered ground along the south ravine is a collage of colors and shapes. I noted yesterday that the earliest fallen leaves have softened into a rain-slicked mat, somber and blackened. Wearing boots and a thick hoodie I worked in the gloom of Monday afternoon, hauling potted nasturtiums into the greenhouse, geraniums into the sun room. The nasturtiums will not long survive in the unheated greenhouse, but the pots can be shoved under the benches in the hope of seedlings emerging in spring from the seeds I've left to ripen and drop into the soil. (Note to Willis-the-Cat who considers the greenhouse his winter quarters: pots filled with soil are not intended as cat latrines!) I tell myself each autumn that I must be sensible about what plants are bought in to over-winter. I have several summer's worth of straggling geraniums, shabby begonias, rosemarys started from cuttings. The table in the sun room is crowded, smaller plants are ranged under the light strip in the middle ground level room, yet I am reluctant to cull. Surely anything which has survived the frost has a right to continued living quarters? There are still the four largest potted rosemarys lined against the screened porch wall. The heavy pot containing my 5 year old lemon verbena has been dragged from the back porch to the downstairs living area. As soon as the leaves begin to drop I will prune the branches. Willis trudges behind me on my meandering tasks about the dooryard. His many mis-adventures over the years have left him with an arthritic gait, but he takes his job as yard foreman seriously still. The light frost has cleared the skies. A few golden leaves cling to the very tops of maples and tulip poplars. The purple leaves of the ash trees are gone. Hickories hold their glow of bronze and russet, oaks are still towers of green. Pegging sheets on the back porch lines mid-morning I noticed how the nearly leafless trees to the south allow the sun in its flattening arc to spill onto the porch and through the south windows of the house. Walking up the lane to the mailbox I wished I had put a down vest over my hoodie. The frost, light though it was, has changed the quality of the air, heightened the scent of chilled grass and decaying leaves. Woodsmoke, the quintessential breath of autumn, hangs in the clear sharp air. At lunchtime a bluebird blundered through the gap in the porch screen where through the summer the hummingbird feeders dangled. The bluebird perched on the back of a porch rocker for a moment as though considering his dilemma, then whisked through the slit screen and was on his way. The bluebirds have been absent since their maddening and messy antics of early summer. It has been several days since I've seen the procession of 10 wild turkeys who have been regular visitors. Grandson Devin viewing the turkeys several weeks ago with his hunting binoculars, noted that the hen turkey has the look of an older bird and that 4 of the 9 offspring are identifiable as young toms. Jim, looking out the window as he dressed this morning noted several deer browsing at the lower end of the west meadow. Herman, the feral cat, arrives before dark to snatch his share of kibble. We've not seen a raccoon in weeks but the unwelcome possums continue to rootle in the cat's dish for any tidbits. Now at nearly dusk I can swivel in my desk chair to glance out windows to south, north or west. Standing for a moment at my west bedroom window I take note of the rusty orange smudge left by the setting sun, the etching of nearly bare branches against the softening hues of dusky blue and grey. The clouds of peach and lavender which pillowed the eastern sky only a few minutes ago are fading. The wind is rising and more leaves slip loose from their moorings to ride the downdraft. Above the neighbor's field a hawk-- or maybe a lone turkey vulture-- circles beneath the shifting layers of grey, finally disappearing, taking his reconnaissance to another quarter of the pasture. So much misery, so much suffering and loss in the world, so much uncertainty. Still tomorrow we turn a calendar page and the season moves on as inexorably as it has always done. This story was posted on 2023-11-06 07:37:26
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More articles from topic Sharon Whitehurst - Whitehurst Diaries:
Moving toward equinox, hoping for a mild autunm Whitehurst Diaries: The Firsts of Spring Whitehurst Diaries: Working With Willis the Cat Aunt Julia's Pudding Story Mid-January: A Journal of (Mostly) Grey Days Whitehurst Diaries: Sojourners The Whitehurst Diaries: Raccoon Saga The Whitehurst Diaries: The Man in the Garden The Whitehurst Diaries: Willis-The-Cat, Then and Now The Whitehurst Diaries: Whir, Whiz, Zoom! View even more articles in topic Sharon Whitehurst - Whitehurst Diaries |
 
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