Through a cloudless October sky, the sunshine pours down, highliting the brilliant fall leaves. The cold nights are intensifying the fall colors. Maybe the fall colors are what guide the geese and the swans south. All they have to do is follow the yellow brick road of turning maples and poplars.

On the way to the post office is a row of towering poplars as grand as any stone cathedral. Today, they were tinged with gold. I had to stop to admire them. Watches are out for storms blowing through starting tomorrow night through the weekend. By the time the storms pass and cloudless skies return, many of these golden leaves may have flown away.

This is what a graveyard of corn looks like. While putting the corn down, I found a curious stubby ear of corn. When you grow your own food, you often find curious items like this stubby corn. I could see a bowl of these roundish corn ears on a dinner table. Half the corn is going to the chickens, the other half indoors for us to enjoy.

Who will harvest the apples? Us or the pileated woodpeckers? Pileated woodpeckers have spotted our apple trees. With the chickens pecking at the low hanging apples, and the pileated woodpeckers attacking the apples from the tops of the trees, we got busy and harvested the bulk of the apples.

The notion of what is food has changed for me now that I’ve been growing vegetables for a handful of years. An ear of corn is much more than the kernels on the cob. It is the whole plant and the months and months of growing it took for the corn to form its ears. I can’t slice into a tomato without seeing the vine.

The personalities of these two little chicks couldn’t be more different. The gray one is shy. The dark one is outgoing and gorges itself on worms. But they are inseparable and constantly talking to each other.

Left, right, left, right, it’s how the zucchini vine grows. During the spring and summer when its huge leaves hide the vine, the lovely pattern the vine makes is not apparent. But as it dies back, the zigzag of the vine is something to smile about.

It’s also bean harvest time. Bean pods have this handy feature that makers of electronic and office goods need to mimic. Dry the bean pods, and when they are ready to open, they pop open with ease. There is no effort, and the snap the dry pods make as you open them is almost meditative. It’s something I could do for hours.

I’ve nearly stabbed myself to death trying to open some of the hard plastic wrappings around a pair of scissors or package of batteries. If you don’t have a scissors, knife, or chainsaw, how are you supposed to open these? How many people bleed to death after cutting themselves trying to open a package of batteries? Wouldn’t it be great if these wrappings would “dry out” once you brought them home, and pop open as easy as dried bean pods? Often nature has thought of a better way to do things. When it comes to packaging things, nature leads the way. And all of nature’s wrappings biodegrade. Many are even edible.