every day is a good day
It’s not unusual to have the first frost during the second week of October. Today the skies were cloudless all day, from before sunrise and even now with the stars filling the night sky.
The first frost is a warning to hurry up and get all the garlic planted, start new compost piles, pick the last of the pears, and start raking the falling leaves, of which there is no end.
Who eats apples? The question is more like who doesn’t eat apples. The Flickers and Stellar Jays joyfully peck at the apples we haven’t picked. I don‘t mind sharing. There are more apples than we can eat.
What I didn’t expect was to find wasps eating apples. The holes the Flickers and Jays make turn into all you can eat buffets for the wasps, though technically, I can’t call it a buffet. The dictionary says a buffet consists of several dishes and here we have a single dish, apple.
More Shaggy Parasols keep popping out of the forest floor. This is quite the season for them this year. We’re not the only ones eating them. I see spots on the larger ones where forest creatures have been nibbling.
After a first of October with the bluest of skies, the stars are out tonight, satellites and shooting stars among them. The nippy mornings are bringing out the fall colors.
The bees and wasps are having their last meals. In about a month frost will put an end to most of their lives. There is a sadness to fall, a sense of loss at seeing the plants succumb to the coming winter, saying good bye to the song birds, watching the leaves fall. Planting garlic and flower bulbs is comforting. I can imagine their strong shoots bursting out of the soft soil as I bury them.
Each day old Sven is still alive is a good day. I’m sure he thinks that getting old is for the birds too.
This may never happen again, an apple tree with red ripe apples and blossoms at the same time.
This will happen again and again, red maple leaves at the start of fall.
The fall rains have set off the mushrooms. The forest floor is covered with them. I bought an extensive guide book on mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest, but even with all the pictures and descriptions, I don’t have the nerve to pick one and take a nibble.
Back in my grade school days in Japan, I brought back an interesting plant from the forest. The stalk looked succulent and tasty, so my mother and I took a few bites. I don’t remember clearly what it tasted like. I do remember the fear I felt when our tongues and lips went numb. We didn’t die, but that was a good lesson not to eat plants you don’t know.
There is just a hint of fall in the Japanese maple leaves along the bridge in the woods. The blue skies of summer are a fading memory. There are more rainy days than not. Today we slip into the dark half of the year with nights longer than days. And on the other half of the world, people are waking to the half of the year with days longer than nights. It’s all rather awesome and no matter how many times it happens, it’s worth celebrating.
Fall is the time to enjoy the cone spires left when the cones of the noble fir disintegrate and leave their center spires sticking up toward the sky. By next fall, I will have forgotten about them, only to smile when I see them again. That’s the good thing about forgetting. You can see the same thing over and over again, and each time it is as fresh as the first.
I like that dogs live their lives in another realm, a world so different from ours. They continually find things I miss in the woods. Takuma has found something in the soft earth under a decaying stump. Whatever it was, it escaped. A mouse, a mole, some creature with a labyrinth of tunnels in the ground. Try as he might, Takuma was unable to catch it this time.
When he shoves his snout into the earth and inhales, Takuma’s brain must light up with a million different scents, experiencing scents which trigger emotions I can’t begin to fathom.
My time in the woods is always enjoyable. There are always new things to see. There is sadness too. The western red cedars are dying, not just around our house, but all around Puget Sound. The number of Swainson and Veery Thrushes is noticeably less than fifteen years ago when their eery songs filled the evening air. Can we change fast enough to not let it all slip away? We keep tugging out the threads of life that hold everything together. How soon will it before we pull one too many threads and it all comes tumbling down? At times is feels like it is all crashing down already.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYqtXR8iPlE&w=779&h=438]