October Snow Beauty

We just started eating a locally grown watermelon, some of us eating more than others:

Then yesterday, after the morning turkey hunt and violin lesson and lunch, as Jay and Isabelle were leaving to go squirrel hunting (she shot two), Jay said “It is so cold for October.  This whole month has been cold.  There has been so little sun.”  While they were gone it started snowing–but nothing stuck.

Last night, as I got ready for bed, the infrequent car driving by the house had a deadened, dull sound that in this latitude is an aural indicator of snowfall.

And sure enough this morning we woke to

Looking towards the blueberries

Looking at the (formerly) tall perennials

The blueberries had to be shaken to remove the heavy, slightly ice-crusted snow;  many of the bushes still have leaves.

Walking up back, Hawthorne spent most of his time snuffing for voles in the snow-covered fallow field.  The sight of  the woods line and hedgerows of trees still in their metallic colors capped with snow  immediately reminded me of the highly crafted artwork or jewelry of finely colored metals worked by repousse and chased with silver.

Often, it is clear to me how artists gathered ideas for their creations from Creation.

The Turkey Trot

No, not the dance; I am referring to the 19 minute hunt Jay took less than an hour ago which resulted in him bringing home another 10+ pound hen turkey and busting up the rest of the flock for the morning’s hunt.

The evidence:

As you see, Hawthorne was quite taken with her.

Here is the goose girl’s goose:

And another:

It is not just her.  It is familial.

Killing Frost

Woke up late yesterday morning–a nasty cold involved in that–to find the first killing frost was still in attendance all the way up to the house.  My father said it was 24.6 degrees on their barn and that it “looked like it had snowed”.

Here the heavy white layer of frost stayed on the ground until almost 9.30AM.

We had a nice long green autumn; almost a month longer than usual.  Not any warmer, really.  But wetter, and the cloud cover and moisture on the plants worked together to result in not any good conditions for an  earlier hard frost.

I had woken up about 3AM Monday morning and Orion’s belt, my old friend of three stars in a row, was in his winter position out my window, clear and bright.  No wind.  All the stars were blazing.  Perfect frost night.

Autumn

cabbage at the home farm

watercress

waterlily autumn crocus

solomon’s seal

I Don’t Think So

The girl tells me Bouncer is actually resting and comfortable in this position.

The Morning Walk

Isaac is off to Institute, pleased as Punch.  The girl as we drove away was asking exactly how did one acquire a driver’s license and how soon after turning the proper age.  Note that she has more than two years to that age.

This morning it was 44 degrees.  I wore a vest.  The cabbage fields were full of lovely shadows and colors in the early morning light.  Hawthorne loves the cooler weather and jumps and skips, twirls and snaps for joy.  The squash and pumpkins will have a hard time getting ripe if we stay in this mode for long, though.

Instead of walking up the runway as I usually do, I walked in the broad median of the cabbage field.  The first third are green cabbage, then a broad strip of red, then another of green.  Even with all their giant leaves, the largest cabbages are not yet very large.  Their leaves looked lovely and I thought momentarily of heisting one home.  Just to eat the leaves.  But no.  There is a reason there are perfect leaves and no weeds at all in the field, and it goes far beyond intense cultivation.  Cabbage production on a large scale requires a considerable array of pesticides and herbicides applied at specific intervals to make the round heads you see in the store.

Hawthorne was running in the soil margin, which I sadly note has had all the tilth knocked out of it (and probably has a hardpan now to boot) by the giant equipment the renters use, and he snuffed along the verge and ran up and down the runway, across it, into the alfalfa on the other side.

Near the end of the field I noticed, finally, a group of deer about 200+ yards away in the field and sun near the headland and stopped.  Hawthorne was busy with toilet duties and did not notice.

Perhaps because my boots made no noise in the soil as I came,  quite surely in the stillness of the morning air no scent betrayed us, and possibly because Hawthorne is fawn-sized, eventually three deer detached themselves from the small herd and walked towards us, cutting more than a third of the distance between us.  H. still was unaware of their presence.  I stood fixedly and observed them.  There were nine in all.  The largest four all had antlers and hung back.  The rest I think were a mix of does and fawns and the ones approaching were most likely fawns.  They were of good size.

When Hawthorne finally saw them the three deer were still coming towards us.  Hawthorne is not afraid of deer.  He goes out of his way to avoid cattle.  I think he thought these might be more cattle, like the ones two fields closer to home.  He stood quite still, sniffing, and finally came to me as I called sotto voce.

That bending over to hold Hawthorne broke the spell.  The deer turned and high-tailed it to their kin.  They all broke and jumped through the hedgerow into the woods.

Fall?

The fall webworms think so:

The poison ivy says “Not yet”:

The anemone japonica thinks fall is coming:

There was fog heavy as rain this morning and our elderly neighbor thinks it might freeze tonight.

Yikes!