every day is a good day
These spent bean pods are ready to be reincarnated. Their lives as bean plants is now over. Over the winter they will turn into soil and be reincarnated as new vegetables. It’s amazing to think that these inedible, stiff-as-cardboard, dried pods will next summer, be crunchy carrots or supple arugula.
The garlic cloves don’t look like much, and yet as I plow through the baskets of garlic bulbs to peel and break apart, I have great expectations. Many are in the ground already, and the last of the planting will soon be over. There are machines that will do this for you. Dump a pile of garlic bulbs in one end and get garlic cloves out the other. But what is the fun in that? Pulling the bulbs apart by hand, you get to see each clove and decide if it’s one worth planting, or if it’s one you should eat this winter. At times, it seems as if the intent of automation isn’t to make life easier, it’s to separate us from a lot of good things to do and experience.
This is what approximately 800 garlic cloves look like. Next June they will look like the lovely scapes below. Amazing how a little clove turns into a two to three foot tall stalk, and a whole bulb of fresh garlic. There are very few things you can buy, that if you stick in the ground, will become something even more wonderful. Stick an iPhone in the ground this fall, and let me know if you end up with five to eight better iPhones next summer.
The fall rains have brought back water land. The ditches are flowing again after a long, dry summer. From now until next summer, the sound of rushing water will fill the air. Like many, I find the sound of flowing water comforting. Now, as I bike around, running errands, everywhere I go, I can hear the soothing sounds of water cascading over the rocks.
This isn’t a gushing, mountain stream. This is a ditch alongside a busy, country road.
The next thing to look forward to is the arrival of the swans. They should appear out of the northern sky any day now.
The Wood Brothers have a song Who the Devil. There are these lines in the song:
Who the devil spins the world around
Well it is what it is and it isn’t what it ain’t
Doesn’t matter what it was cause you know it’s gonna keep on
Keep on changin’
Change is the operative word when describing the universe. The hydrangea covered fence I pass by on the way home from the post office, was in bloom in June. Now it is worn and tired. Soon it will bare of leaves.
Every day, hour, minute, and second we find ourselves in a changed world. And there is no going back to where we were. It’s futile trying to cling to what was. All we can do is enjoy what comes.
The Japanese maples are turning brilliant. I find them most beautiful when there are still some green leaves mixed in with the orange ones. As the leaves color, their tongues curl and become claws. It’s like their leaves are reaching up and clawing the sky, coaxing winter to come and cover them with a blanket of snow. Or they are trying to catch the wind to blow away to someplace warm.
