Thursday, October 11, 2012

in the cover of darkness

Autumn as been short and lackluster in my corner of the world. 
I suspect the too dry summer stressed the trees and when the time
came to say goodbye to their canopies, it was without a fight.
The leaves have drifted down, mostly yellow, ever as lovely,
on the forest walks,
 giving way to my favorite view. 
I can see the flock in the near field now from the house. 
And they can see the lights of home come nightfall. 
Weather reports portend the end of the growing season
tomorrow night with a killing frost. I am behind on that count.
It can't be! I looked at the thermometer in the kitchen window
tonight. It reads 34. Too close for discomfort.
Luna and I swung about the gardens to cover anything
I am not ready to part with yet.
The indigo won. 
It will have a few days relief after
tomorrow night and we have work left to do
my indigo and I.

12 comments:

  1. lovely lovely garden in the cold dark, i hope it makes it through the night. hard frost predicted here.

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  2. so true, Velma, there is peace in this chill and you and I are cheering it on, I know.

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  3. The colors here have been predominantly yellow to with a just a small splash of red in the maple leaves. The rest dry and brown. The pines are dumping their needles with abandon. I suspect tomorrow the rest of the leaves will give up and fall too. I spent an hour just watching and listening to them fall in my wee woods.

    We were spared last night with a bit of cloud cover with temps in the very low 40's. Tonight they promise that killing frost. Tooo early for me. I too cover stuff up with flannel sheets, but grew very little this year and all has been harvested. The volunteer winter squashes and eggplants were the last to be pulled yesterday along with a few very green tomatoes. The parsley is next today.

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  4. We had our first killing frost last Sunday night - caught a lot of people off guard, too. The trees here are quickly changing, but I agree, the stress of the very dry summer has the colors far less than spectacular this year. Still, I love the crunchiness under foot and I stomp on every leaf walking across the parking lot to my car each night just to hear them crinkle.

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  5. No frost here yet, ( humidity too low at 9% to actually make frost, but dang cold in the mornings. Polar fleece gloves and hat already by the door. The gawd awful winter barn coat will be hanging up on the peg soon enough

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  6. Theresa, I know about the barn coat! Although it's feeling mighty cozy!
    Manise, how healing to just stand and listen to fall.
    Benita, I am hoping you all regain in the moisture department. Perhaps good snow cover will come this winter!

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  7. Low 50ies outside here but 74 in my study with no heating on because of the sunshine today.

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  8. I just love that ghostly image at the end. That's just how frost sneaks in, isn't it, a large, irregular canopy laid over everything like a shroud? wonderful.

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    Replies
    1. well put, Christi. "and here it comes, here comes the night".

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  9. We had our first frost last night.

    Thanks for sharing the photos and your lyrical writing!!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Bev. A day later and up here it was the big one. 23 degrees and all is done. A bit liberating!

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