Here it is mid-July, and I am wishing for fall. Oh not for the reasons you may think. Not because of the summer heat with the air caressing one's skin like silk. Not because of the early morning birds singing, cawing and crying out waking me from my slumbers. But because fall is the end season. When the lovely flowers of summer die back, the trees become a wild quilt of colors draped across the landscape. My green, beautiful world recedes into browns and gray and eventually the snow comes.
In the fall the days are ripe with the last fruits of the season. Apples become cider and pumpkins become pies. We gather and pick, blanch, boil, can and freeze. We dig, store, mulch and prepare for winter. We pile books next to our chairs and pull out projects forgotten in the rush of Spring. We bask in the shorter warm days and wrap ourselves against the cold nights. Eventually frost comes and the gardens are completely gone for the season. There is no more gathering. Just the slow and patient job of cleaning up the debris, putting away the now empty pots, gathering the detritus of a mad gardener and storing it in sheds and cellars until another spring comes. During those time when I am doing rote jobs that do not require my attention my mind wanders to the years before. Places, times, people, etc., memories floating around my head like the leaves falling from trees, swirling and dancing in the breeze until they finally float to the ground.
We are getting older. Our children have grown, married and made us grandparents. My parents have died, their ashes stashed in little holes in granite walls in a state far south of here. There have been marriage and divorce with the family this past year. I have watched with great sadness my father in law become almost house bound due to health issues. Visits to the cottage by the lake is less children and more adults, although some adults are more childlike by the water.
I am just feeling I need Fall to hide in for awhile. To let the memories come and go as I am outside feeling my world tucking itself in for the long winter season. Fall is a restorative to me. It brings the world into perspective. The many stems, stalks and leaves that I gather will compost and enrich the soil for another generation of plants. Many of my flowering plants are perennials and they are only disappearing beneath the soil to gather strength for the coming spring. The trees will leaf again in plethora of green in the Spring. It is the ebb and flow of life.
I will still enjoy my Summer with all that it can bring. But this year Fall will have a little more meaning and I will try not to rush through it, running quickly to the holidays because I want them behind me (I don't enjoy them much any more) so I can get to the next year and the next spring. I will try to slow my time down a bit. Try more for 'child' time when Summer was forever and Fall was meant for gathering leaves because the colors were pretty and pressing them in books, making acorn necklaces and breaking open the milkweed pods to watch the seeds with their downy parachutes fly off in the breeze.
I admit this whole growing older part of life now is bothering me. When you are a kid you want to rush into being older, but when you are older you want to put the brakes on and slow down.
Not constantly and not every day but every now and then.....I am terrified. I am on the backside of my life with less years in front than behind. It's scary but I am going to try not to let my fear of the future destroy me enjoying the future. And that is why I need Fall.
In the fall the days are ripe with the last fruits of the season. Apples become cider and pumpkins become pies. We gather and pick, blanch, boil, can and freeze. We dig, store, mulch and prepare for winter. We pile books next to our chairs and pull out projects forgotten in the rush of Spring. We bask in the shorter warm days and wrap ourselves against the cold nights. Eventually frost comes and the gardens are completely gone for the season. There is no more gathering. Just the slow and patient job of cleaning up the debris, putting away the now empty pots, gathering the detritus of a mad gardener and storing it in sheds and cellars until another spring comes. During those time when I am doing rote jobs that do not require my attention my mind wanders to the years before. Places, times, people, etc., memories floating around my head like the leaves falling from trees, swirling and dancing in the breeze until they finally float to the ground.
We are getting older. Our children have grown, married and made us grandparents. My parents have died, their ashes stashed in little holes in granite walls in a state far south of here. There have been marriage and divorce with the family this past year. I have watched with great sadness my father in law become almost house bound due to health issues. Visits to the cottage by the lake is less children and more adults, although some adults are more childlike by the water.
I am just feeling I need Fall to hide in for awhile. To let the memories come and go as I am outside feeling my world tucking itself in for the long winter season. Fall is a restorative to me. It brings the world into perspective. The many stems, stalks and leaves that I gather will compost and enrich the soil for another generation of plants. Many of my flowering plants are perennials and they are only disappearing beneath the soil to gather strength for the coming spring. The trees will leaf again in plethora of green in the Spring. It is the ebb and flow of life.
I will still enjoy my Summer with all that it can bring. But this year Fall will have a little more meaning and I will try not to rush through it, running quickly to the holidays because I want them behind me (I don't enjoy them much any more) so I can get to the next year and the next spring. I will try to slow my time down a bit. Try more for 'child' time when Summer was forever and Fall was meant for gathering leaves because the colors were pretty and pressing them in books, making acorn necklaces and breaking open the milkweed pods to watch the seeds with their downy parachutes fly off in the breeze.
I admit this whole growing older part of life now is bothering me. When you are a kid you want to rush into being older, but when you are older you want to put the brakes on and slow down.
Not constantly and not every day but every now and then.....I am terrified. I am on the backside of my life with less years in front than behind. It's scary but I am going to try not to let my fear of the future destroy me enjoying the future. And that is why I need Fall.
