Sunday, August 15, 2004
Autumn on the Way
by Trendle Ellwood
There is a great resistance in me to admitting that summer has passed her prime. But even through my own lips the word autumn often slips these days. For it is the autumn gold and red raspberries, which are bearing fruit now, beyond our pines. And it is the autumn peach, which softens on the tree. The sumac leaves alongside the country roads are turning red and the goldenrod is budding out. Six weeks till frost after the golden rod blooms is what my Grandma always says. The purple ironweed and the mauve colored joe pye are blooming beside the yellow tall coneflower in unmown fields. These are the blooms, which forecast autumn on these hills of mine.
I picked my last wild edible berry of the season last week in the blackberry brambles. A part of me was glad to not have to fight the nettle, the thorn and the thistle any longer but another part of me was sad. It seemed that I should perform some last rite, some ritual of departure. I wondered what part of me the brambles would most miss until I would be back next picking season. And I remembered that it was my hair that the bramble thorns were always grabbing and so I reached up to my head and plucked a single strand and ceremonially hung it upon a bramble cane. There brambles, I proclaimed, this one is free. And it was not even a grey hair that I willingly left blowing there upon the bramble cane but a bronzed brown one.
Although autumn is stepping in the harvest is still being collected. The bees have not disappointed us, they have been very busy and we are having a wonderful honey harvest. Hubby is filling up jars with this golden elixir and cutting the honeycomb into what I have renamed
Honey Cakes.
Indeed the threat of the end of summer intensifies my enthusiasm to get more jars of preserves sealed and upon the shelves. The apple tree down in the valley begs me to pluck her fruit and preserve it into applesauce with lots of cinnamon, which I am going to do today. The elderberries have turned the color of purple-black and I have been squeezing them and boiling them into purple-red jelly.
The tomatoes and peppers are ready to be made into salsa and that autumn peach longs to be made into jam. I have much to do for autumn is peeking in my window and I must put summer away.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
There is a great resistance in me to admitting that summer has passed her prime. But even through my own lips the word autumn often slips these days. For it is the autumn gold and red raspberries, which are bearing fruit now, beyond our pines. And it is the autumn peach, which softens on the tree. The sumac leaves alongside the country roads are turning red and the goldenrod is budding out. Six weeks till frost after the golden rod blooms is what my Grandma always says. The purple ironweed and the mauve colored joe pye are blooming beside the yellow tall coneflower in unmown fields. These are the blooms, which forecast autumn on these hills of mine.
I picked my last wild edible berry of the season last week in the blackberry brambles. A part of me was glad to not have to fight the nettle, the thorn and the thistle any longer but another part of me was sad. It seemed that I should perform some last rite, some ritual of departure. I wondered what part of me the brambles would most miss until I would be back next picking season. And I remembered that it was my hair that the bramble thorns were always grabbing and so I reached up to my head and plucked a single strand and ceremonially hung it upon a bramble cane. There brambles, I proclaimed, this one is free. And it was not even a grey hair that I willingly left blowing there upon the bramble cane but a bronzed brown one.
Although autumn is stepping in the harvest is still being collected. The bees have not disappointed us, they have been very busy and we are having a wonderful honey harvest. Hubby is filling up jars with this golden elixir and cutting the honeycomb into what I have renamed
Honey Cakes.
Indeed the threat of the end of summer intensifies my enthusiasm to get more jars of preserves sealed and upon the shelves. The apple tree down in the valley begs me to pluck her fruit and preserve it into applesauce with lots of cinnamon, which I am going to do today. The elderberries have turned the color of purple-black and I have been squeezing them and boiling them into purple-red jelly.
The tomatoes and peppers are ready to be made into salsa and that autumn peach longs to be made into jam. I have much to do for autumn is peeking in my window and I must put summer away.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
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