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.