Outside the clouds are dense and low; at 4pm they start to darken. Today they were a bruised lavender, lit in a strange glow. Yesterday it snowed and today it rained and turned everything into ice. We haven't seen the sun since Sunday. The birds eat voraciously. We go through a bird feeder a week. Two suet cakes have slowed them down. The days are being pinched down between the thumb and forefinger of the nights. We make soup. We bake bread. We read. We write. Winter hasn't even yet begun.

Almost all the leaves are now fallen and I was so busy gaping at them, the bright jewel toned beauties, that I hadn't the time to come in and write about them. This year, apparently, was one of the brightest and longest and most colorful in many years, some will even go as far as to call it thirty years, but I'm not sure if I can trust someone that dramatic. But it has lasted long, and scientifically due to the rain and the season we had, this brilliance had been predicted. It was truly difficult to drive, at times.

Now the leaves scatter the ground in a carpet of brown yellow and orange, melting into one color that I can't name, except for: dried autumn leaves. At dusk, which now comes quickly, too quickly for me, I walked out to dump the compost and the chill invigorated me for a walk to the water. The air smells like ice; cold cold water. I could hear someone chewing,the muskrats, who have been eating every exposed root and grub, ripping up the grass in preparation for, what I think is going to be a very cold winter. Indians used to base their predictions for the cold on how much wood beavers stocked in the water. I'm basing it on muskrat hunger. A new song?

Across the way I heard loud leaves crunching. Deer? I saw a flash of white tail and a scurrying. Canine? I guessed it was a fox, getting up for the night.

The sun was gone, and my feet were fast getting cold. A star winked. I gathered up a breath of cold air and headed back indoors where meatloaf cooked in the oven.

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.