Friday Ramble - Demeter at the Gate

A single burnished leaf from the bur oak in the front yard floats down and comes to rest in a pot of bronzey chrysanthemums on the cobblestones in front of the little blue house in the village. Days are still steamy here for the most part, but nights are starting to cool down, and it won't be long until we have to carry the pot indoors every evening as darkness falls and the wind comes out of the river.

As the oak leaf makes itself comfortable among the potted “mums", a long v-shaped skein of geese passes overhead. Above the wedge of high-flying geese and slightly to their right, a scrap of waning moon is translucent in the morning sky. For obvious reasons, September's moon is often called the "Harvest Moon", and it will be brand new on Sunday.  Here comes the first full moon of autumn (September 24th) in all its auriferous splendor. Am I going to be out in the garden with camera and tripod? You bet. Please mama, no clouds that night.

Closer to the earth, the swallows of summer are packing their flight bags and making ready to depart, their places on local telephone wires to be taken by flutters of sparrows and constellations of noisy starlings who are putting on winter stars and flashy yellow beaks.

There are frantic squirrels everywhere filling their larders, and I have surrendered to the little blighters in the matter of geraniums - there does not seem to be much I can do to prevent my flowers being tossed out of their pots and replaced with buried acorns, berries, crabapples and walnuts. For some reason, the squirrels leave our chrysanthemums alone.

Early Macintosh apples are starting to appear at farm markets, and several “Macs” rest flushed and rosy in a bowl on the kitchen counter.  We carried a lovely big brown paper bag of apples home from a local orchard a few days ago, along with the first cider of the season.  Most of the apples are destined for eating, but there will be applesauce and pies, perhaps a few jars of apple butter. A mug of Yorkshire tea with pumpernickel toast and apple butter for breakfast, yum...

Corn, squash, apples and hay, there is no doubt about it—Lady Harvest is at the gate and rattling its rusty latch with vigor. She knows the cantrip that grants her entrance to these hills, and she knows the key in which it is to be sung.