HeronDragonWrites: Sacred Tragedy

Autumn Angelica; Deb Marshall photo

Mid-October, and the dehumidifier in the cellar turned itself on again a couple of days ago: it’s rather warm, and humid, more like the end of summer than October. I systematically cleaned and put away all the summer clothes after our 90-degree September weather; I’ve had to pull a bunch of them back out of storage because it’s shorts and t-shirt weather, not long pants and wooley sock weather.

We did have another frost the other night, which finally bumped off the zucchini plants, remaining tomatoes, and scarlet runner beans, and turned the basil into mush. The fall raspberries, however, are still in full production, and to pick them, some days we have to fight swarms of yellow jackets and wasps. I’m still finding a tomato or two in the compost bin from a volunteer plant; and the cherry tomatoes near the house still think it’s summer. The fava beans are still blooming, and an angelica plant I put in last fall suddenly shot up a week ago and opened eight huge, gorgeous blossoms; and some rogue petunias, and the calendula, are looking just fine.

I’m supposed to be in the midst of my cleaning-out-the-garden vacation, but so far all I’ve done is start to gather together some of the tomato cages and continue the endless pulling of weeds. I can finish the cage-gathering job this week, and start to empty the flower pots on the wart, but even those are only half finished – one fuschia, and some lovely purple and white stuff and some pansies and petunias are merrily blooming away, cheek by jowl with the chrysanthemums, which are looking the worse for the warm weather. We brought the bay tree and kaffir lime tree and tender hibiscus inside a couple of weeks ago, but the passionflower has a handful of buds on it that are getting ready to open, so I’m leaving it out and keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll have time to bloom before I absolutely have to cut the vine back and haul it indoors for the duration.

Catman Trimming the Catnip; Deb Marshall photo

Mr. Catmandoo is busy doing his own fall chores, pruning his many catnip plots back, which he does in surges, divided by big snacks in the kitchen and lengthy naps in his chair under the tent on the wart. I have a long list of things I still need to do: pull the carrots and parsley root and the few remaining beets, harvest the celeriac, dig some Jerusalem artichokes, search the scarlet runner vines for bean pods I missed, make sure no winter squashes got left behind. A big pile of cardboard and newspapers are waiting to be used as mulch in the garden, the blueberries that were plagued by mummy berry this summer need to be heavily mulched, and I need to bring in the solar jar lights from the wart rails, and the orb-that-changes-color from the middle of the garden before it freezes; and there’s a basket full of spring bulbs that need planting, the raspberry canes need to be cut back once they finish making berries, and the planters need to be emptied once the flowers stop blooming. Marjoram, bee balm, and eventually Jerusalem artichokes need to be cut back, sunflowers tugged out of the garden and any seedheads the birds haven’t yet cleared placed somewhere the the birds can get at them. I really should try to locate the iris the marjoram overwhelmed this summer and move it someplace safer. The bird bath needs cleaning and storing, the hardy hibiscus needs mulching and covering with a snow roof, and the tent on the wart needs to go into winter storage. And weeding – oh, the weeds! And it all seems too soon!

As the leaves – which are very slow to turn and fall this year – are slowly turning and falling, we get to see stuff we haven’t seen all summer long – like the road from the wart, and the pile of old wire fencing that we’d put by to take to the dump but got covered by flora long before we got to it. In the apple tree, a lovely bird’s nest is now visible. It was a good year for apples, we have more in the freezer than we’ll be able to eat in three years; and apparently the birds enjoyed the apple tree this summer, too.

Bird nest in apple tree; Deb Marshall photo

The end of summer is showing itself inside my house, slowly, as well. One sign I find unhappily every morning on my kitchen counters: the Beastreau beastie caught a mouse – or two – in the cellar and brought them upstairs to play with, where she promptly lost them. I can tell, because there are nibbles in my ripe tomatoes every morning, there’s mousie poop adorning my counters, and I saw the butt end of a mousie launching itself from counter to stove when I came into the kitchen unexpectedly one morning. Besides, the Beastreau has spent hours every night planted in front of the stove, waiting…so far, she hasn’t waited long enough.

In the dining room, the three baskets full of green tomatoes have been reduced to two half-baskets, the rest becoming spaghetti sauce as the tomatoes ripened from inside out. The sauce is satisfying to store in the freezer down cellar -- as the freezers fill, my Inner Primitive dances with glee, counting on her fingers and toes all the lovely things she’ll be able to make to eat when the north wind howls and snow piles up in the garden.

But the Other Me, who finds the calling of the owls in the night-time has taken on a mournful sound, who has harkened more than once to the calling of ravens, is wrought with the bitter sweetness of the season. All that makes autumn the most beautiful and emotional time of year is the slow death of what was vibrantly alive and growing just weeks, or even days, earlier. And this is one of the mysterious, and sacred, tragedies of our human sensibility in our world.