Now watch this autumn that arrives In smells. All looks like summer still; Colours are quite unchanged, the air On green and white serenely thrives. Heavy the trees with growth and full The fields. Flowers flourish everywhere.
Proust who collected time within A child’s cake would understand The ambiguity of this — Summer still raging while a thin Column of smoke stirs from the land Proving that autumn gropes for us.
But every season is a kind Of rich nostalgia. We give names — Autumn and summer, winter, spring — As though to unfasten from the mind Our moods and give them outward forms. We want the certain, solid thing.
But I am carried back against My will into a childhood where Autumn is bonfires, marbles, smoke; I lean against my window fenced From evocations in the air. When I said autumn, autumn broke.
When I was at Pippin’s I got to help water her garden, and pull ever encroaching forest ferns out of the blueberry patch. Many years ago she planted four varieties of blueberries, two of each, aiming for a harvest that would stretch from one end to the other of the season, and they mostly are growing and spreading, and bearing fruit.
She had recently taken her dahlia tubers out of winter storage and planted them inside the deer fence; they were almost all coming up. Often I have visited in September, for Ivy’s birthday, when those flowers are in their glory.
Four years ago I visited their homestead in this month of June, and it’s interesting to see my pictures of different plants and activities from back then. I don’t know yet when I will be able to return….
The glory of this day
Anyway, I drove home yesterday, and immediately went out to water the potted plants; the mock orange is stealing the show right now. I am thankful to have my own garden to play in. Out there I can forget what month or year it is — or what century! — if only for a moment.
DEW LIGHT
Now in the blessed days of more and less when the news about time is that each day there is less of it I know none of that as I walk out through the early garden only the day and I are here with no before or after and the dew looks up without a number or a present age
On Saturday we left the house early to get to the hot air balloon festival before the sun came up. Smokey the Bear was the first to get inflated and lift off. This is the same event I attended with Pippin seven years ago, and most of the balloons were the same, too.
In the middle of the day we took naps, and tended the garden. That is, Pippin gardened and I took pictures.
Late afternoon we took the camp stove and makings for Frito Pie up on the volcanic peak of Mount Shasta, to the Old Ski Bowl, 7800 ft. elevation (The top is almost twice that high). We ate our picnic dinner and stayed for the sunset.
The children took me up a ways to a place among the rocks that they call the Sunset Cafe, and we pretend feasted on plates of salad, strawberry bread and chocolatey desserts, artfully arranged from whatever vegetable and mineral materials could be found lying nearby:
We gazed off toward the west…
And when it was starting to get dark, both Ivy and Jamie fell within about ten minutes of each other, and cried for a while in pain from the shock of sharp rocks slamming into knees and ribs. Jamie had tripped over the giant rock loaf of “strawberry bread.” But they were soon done with that and we set off down the mountain again.
Today was full. This is the first year Ivy didn’t have a themed cake, and the first year she helped make her birthday pie.
Last week I made a quick trip up north to be with granddaughter Ivy on her eighth birthday. At first I thought I would be driving out of our newly cleared and clean spaces into the smoke again, but the skies turned blue there, too.
…Until the evening before I came home, when we went to a lake and it was a little smoky again. But we pretended it was from campfires.
I taught Jamie how to use a needle and thread, and Ivy the blanket stitch. They were very intent on their work and did not want to stop even when Grandma had to go on to other business. I can understand; it really is fun to make lines and designs in different pretty colors while you chat with fellow stitchers.
I gave Ivy her Aunt Kate’s childhood sewing basket which we sorted and organized together; from we don’t know where Kate had acquired many little wooden spools of bright silk thread, the colors of which Ivy began to name on the spot: Cold as Steel, Easter Egg, Pumpkin Pie, Red Osier (which I learned is a species of dogwood), Gold Mine… and many more. I didn’t want to stop sewing myself to write them down. Those silks turned out to be tangly and not very strong, so they were abandoned in favor of the modern spools and adequate colors.
Hoping for someone to bring down crabapples.Jamie’s desk that serves as the top of a cave.
The last morning, minutes before my departure, I visited Pippin’s always fascinating garden that is mostly behind a tall deer fence. The zinnias are outside, because the deer don’t always eat them. But the dahlias must be inside, because the deer would always eat them.
Tired of fighting aphids and rats who attack my vegetables, and inspired by this celebration of a showy species, I began to think of growing some in my planter boxes next spring. Keith H, above, and Nicholas, below, particularly captured my heart. I used to grow some gorgeous dahlias here, but didn’t really have adequate space in the previous setting, and eventually gave them away.
It only took a little bit of reading about dahlia culture to make me realize that I don’t need another project. No, a much nicer plan is to take the easy and fun route, which is Highway 5 all the way to Pippin’s every fall, where if I time it right I might take in a birthday or two and a dreamy visit with her beautiful garden.
Gladsome Lights 