It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and there have been so many changes. This morning, outside, there is thick fog. You can’t even see the water. So much has changed. From the first tremors in the still green leaves to the slight change in the night air, you could feel autumn coming on. You could see it in the garden: the once spruce and hardy plants had a slight droop on. You could tell a stasis had been reached, a zenith, where you knew that things would only stop living so hard.

We had a few incredible storms where it rained mercilessly and the back pond is full, even where it was starting to turn to meadow and you could see thick full grass growing. Sadly, we don’t have a canoe right now and it gnaws at me every time I look at the full, swollen pond, its glassy surface begging to be explored.

The garden is almost completely expired. Due to the rains (and my poor choice of type of tomato) most of the tomatoes, of which there were many, split their sides and rotted. I heard it was a tough season for them to get ripe as well, and as soon as they did they ripped open due to the heavy rains. They drank too much. The other day I pulled them all out, and plucked all the fruit, green and not. I pickled five quarts of the green tomatoes, and we’ve been having tomato salads every day. We have an incredible bouquet of herbs in the kitchen, standing in a mug of water, from a friends garden. It’s so beautiful and fragrant: lemon balm, parsley, rosemary, thyme, catnip and basil. The cucumbers are still prolific, although the leaves are starting to edge in brown, and I haven’t made any pickles of them because they are garden cukes, not kirbys. Again, next year.

What is most exciting is my pumpkin plant. A volunteer, I did not plant it, it just popped up and I figured it was something. I knew it was a squash of some sort, but when it started fruiting, I was overwhelmed. We have about twelve on the vine and each day I check on them. They grow so quickly! The plant itself is beyond hardy, the tendrils have incredible strength and climb all over everything. I tried to train them on the porch trellis but the tendrils just stayed curled and wouldn’t grasp the wood. I relased it to the green below and it slithered away at it's own green pace, grasping on the sawgrass and old bee balm.

The apple tree is old and gnarled and we’ve strung a hammock from it. The apples are yellow and deformed, but the birds seem to enjoy them. The geese are here in numbers and the pond is beginning to fill with them. Along with them the blue jays have returned. I catch one of them practicing a hawk’s cry in the apple tree, but he sounds so bad I laugh. In the mornings you can find quite a few big fat flickers pecking away in the dirt. One morning I counted ten.

The days are warm and the nights are cool, if only we had time to stare at everything all day, to remember the green, to keep it memorized. We know what will happen.

This morning it's incredibly quiet and still. I spent the better part of it pruning—-I am amazed at how wild everthing has become. The rose of sharon bush is getting crud from it’s next door neighbor the choke cherry tree, so I trimmed both back. The bees hovered nervously as I cut back their meal ticket, the blooms of the rose of Sharon. Below, the bee balm has creeped in to the foot path and as I trimmed it back, I found it had taken over a foot. We ended up sawing down a sizable offshoot of the choke cherry, as well. Here we upset the catbirds who swallow down the dark purple choke cherries greedily, hopping from branch to branch to pick the choicest ones. I tried to attack the garden and restore some order to the tomato plants, but it’s pointless. It’s my fault I planted them so close together in the first place. After picking a few tomatoes—I hear they are slow to ripen this season—I inspected the cucumbers. They are prolific. I have to start making pickles.

There is no breeze but it’s not hot due to the thick cover of patchy clouds in the sky. I walked down to the dock to cut back all the growth down there. I brought my binoculars and was rewarded: a great egret fishing. I’ve seen it twice before already, stone still and beautifully, strikingly white, the only match being the water lilies that dot the pond.

I chopped back as much as I could and rewarded myself with a seat on the bench. The view is now obstructed by the purple loosestrife, tall and willowy, a bright shock of tiny purple flowers lining the top two feet so that when there are fields of it it’s a waving wash of purple. I wanted to put boots on and to wade out and chop them all back, but I was stopped by the constant buzz of what I soon realized to be hundreds of bees buzzing in the flowers, and I decided to stop chopping and leave to bees to their business.

The heat has filled our heads with thick cotton. We are like zombies. The night holds no reprieve. Bugs crawl on the computer screen, and they dive bomb the screen of the window in such numbers that it sounds like hail.

Even the too fast hummingbird has to slow down in its quest for nectar. The rose of sharon bush is in full bloom, the pink flowers cluster and beckon the little bird with the deep magenta centers. It looks dull and not much bigger than a big bumblebee when it perches, and it's surprising when it does. But only for a minute--then it's buzzing around again, and I am quiet and don't breathe so it won't swerve away. I can see its brilliant metallic green back and the bright ruby flash of the throat which earlier looked black. A male, I later read, the females don't have any red.

It's nice to see something so light, as everything feels so heavy. The garden, while exciting, is pendulous: tomatoes, still green hang down and the four plum tomato plants are like one big snarl of green; the cucumbers sprout prodigiously, grasping their iron clasped tendrils to pull themselves out further; peppers are beginning to curl out like little elf shoes. Today I tasted the very first grape tomato, and it was so real, so sweet. How a tomato should taste.

Every morning I inspect this growth, and every morning it boggles my mind. How the hell does it happen? And when? Right now, under my bug swarmed window, there are growing things, getting greener or longer or sweeter.

I am astounded by life; how can anything else be so amazing?