The Season of Last Things

This is the season of last things, and how poignant they are in their shapes and colors, in every fiber of their being.

The last antique roses are blooming in our garden, and the last ripening tomatoes cling to their vines in the veggie patch.  The last purple grapes of the season dangle in local arbors, about to be picked and turned into jelly and wine.  Scarlet Virginia creepers wrap old wooden fences in the village, and the last crimson berries sway on our hawthorn, most of them already carried off by birds and squirrels.  Maple, oak and beech leaves from old trees flutter through the air like birds, coming to rest on veranda railings and the chilly dark earth below.

As much as I love autumn, this season always takes some getting used to, and I am working on it again this time around.  Many farewells were said this week, and I tried to remember, too, to say thanks to the myriad entities who enriched our lives this year and are now passing away.  Bumbles, dragonflies and cicadas - wherever they alight in their journey, and whoever (or whatever) they come to be the next time around, may they all be well and happy.

At first light, autumn hedgerows wear spiderwebs from here to there, swaying and glistening and hung with dew like pearls.  I remember an October morning a few years ago when a neighbor in the village rang our doorbell a few minutes after sunrise, breathless and wide-eyed and ecstatic.  While walking her dogs in a nearby field, she had discovered a vast and dewy orb weaver's web that I just had to come out and capture with Pentax and macro lens.  My friend is now in an assisted living accommodation, and I think of her whenever I pass the cedar hedge where we stood wondering together at the break of day, as happy as two hoary old clams can ever be.