Friday Ramble - Demeter at the Gate

A single burnished leaf from the oak in the front yard floats down and comes to rest in a pot of bronzey chrysanthemums on the threshold of the little blue house in the village. Days are still warm 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 “mums", a long v-shaped skein of geese passes overhead, above them a floating veil of gauzy clouds. I remember a similar vista in early September last year, but with a fragile scrap of waning moon above and slightly to the right of the birds. This time around, the moon is waxing, and she will be full on September 13th, a few minutes before midnight. Here comes the Harvest Moon in all her auriferous splendor. Am I going to be out in the garden with camera and tripod that Friday evening? 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.

Frantic squirrels everywhere are 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 the flowers from being unceremoniously 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. Mugs of Yorkshire tea with pumpernickel toast and apple butter are in the cards.

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.