The cottonwoods have turned. As colorful as they are, standing tall against the sky, they aren’t an honest depiction of what this season is like. To convey this season, I should post pictures of near total darkness. It’s dark in the morning. It’s dark by late afternoon. It’s dark most days with heavy clouds obscuring the mountains and the sun.

One last Dahlia adds some brightness. Each day is darker than the day before, but in just five and a half weeks the days will start to lengthen. We humans can’t help but have at least one toe in the future. The swans are back, foraging in the fields. They just arrived, but are some of them already planning their trips back north? Are some counting the days until they can go home?

Snow is back on the foothills. On cloudy days, it’s impossible to see how low or how high up the hills the snow is. But when the clouds part, it’s easy to picture foxes playing in fresh snow high up on the foothills.

If you’re not satisfied with enough, you’ll never be satisfied with more. There are a number of variations of this saying by Epicurus. The insight is as meaningful now as when Epicurus said it thousands of years ago.

One potato satisfies me, so when I bring in a basket of potatoes from the garden, I have no problems being equally satisfied. And there is a fat leak as well.

The first frost of the season happened this morning. Each fall, the first frost of the season is as delightful as all the first frosts of years past. They are a sharp reminder that winter is coming. Touch the frosty grass and your fingers sting from the cold. First frost mornings are transformative.

So how many pies can I make out of these pumpkins? Few garden plants are as exuberant as pumpkins. World domination is on their minds as they spread their vines and huge leaves. Seemingly out of nowhere, bright yellow, huge pumpkins appear under their thick leaves.

Yesterday, I noticed that the forest floor had an abundance of mushrooms. Not surprising considering the moist, cool weather we’ve had lately. But as I looked at the variety of mushrooms sprouting everywhere, I had to check under the cedar trees where two falls ago, I found a bounty of shaggy parasol mushrooms. Last year there were none.

But this year, they are back. Lots of them. For a week or two, we’ll feast on them. I may even try drying some. I read that if you dry them and let them age, they taste even better.

September is grape season here, so the chickens are grateful. One variety of grapes has small grapes with big seeds. There are other grapes with larger grapes and no seeds, so these seeded grapes are mostly for the chickens. Toss a basket of grapes and the chickens come running to feast on them.

The clouds this time of year are entertaining. Each day different types of clouds float by. These wispy ones from last week were captivating.

The mornings are brisk these days. Brisk enough to begin coloring the maple tree.

Early this morning, while the dew was still heavy, I found a bumble bee waking up on an artichoke flower, its wings wet with dew. When I find bees who’ve spent the night on a flower, I wonder if they arrived too late to go home the night before, or are they worn out and on their death beds, too worn out to make it home? I guess if I were a bee, I might prefer to rest my weary body on a comforting flower instead of struggling to make it back to the nest.

There’s a sadness to their short lives. I’m sure they don’t feel sad. Buzzing from flower to flower all day long is their joy.

A small spider has made a home on the same artichoke flower. It’s as colorful and dazzling a world as any tropical coral reef, only it’s just a few steps from the front door. It’d be fun living in a home made of soft, blue-purple rods that tower above you and through which you slither through.