Late to the Party

 

After a few dreary rainy November days, the sun came out this morning.  As I looked out my front window, I noticed that the big maple had finally decided to join the autumn party.  It was about time – most of the other trees had already shed their gowns of gold and red and yellow, and the oaks had put on cloaks of russet and brown.  This particular tree, which I planted almost 50 years ago in what was then my front yard, had stubbornly remained green.  Maybe it didn’t want to compete with the other trees, maybe it was confused by the weird warm weather lingering way past its time.  When have we ever reached the week before Thanksgiving with roses blooming?  Or without a real killing frost?

I noticed with dismay last week that my spring flowers, those that come back from seed every year, are already up.  My poor, confused bee balm and larkspur are growing thick in the flower beds.  Does this mean they won’t come up and bloom in the spring?  I can’t find any answer to that question.  I don’t even want to think about what might be going on down in my wildflower garden.  Between the drought this summer and the weird warm fall, there is no telling.  But I remind myself that those flowers have survived and thrived for longer than I have been looking at them, and they will be okay.

I’m sure science has an answer to why leaves change color in the fall, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any theory about why the colors are so varied, or why certain trees put on the same color every year.  The dogwoods and the sumac and the sweet gum trees catch fire with deep red.  The maples are either yellow, gold or pinkish gold.  The oaks are dark russet or brown.  And there is usually a progression, with the sumacs leading the dance and the oaks bringing up the rear.  With the changes we are seeing in the climate, who knows how long these rules will  hold true?  Just look at my roses, merrily blooming away on the day before Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving used to be hog-killing weather, when meat could be safely hung in the smokehouse.

What doesn’t change, I trust, is the march of the seasons here in Tennessee.  Even now, as the huge maples have lost most of their leaves, next years bud are there, dormant and waiting for spring.  The caterpillars are sleeping, protected from the cold to come, waiting for their wings next summer.  And hidden in the grass are the acorns and seeds that have the potential to be the next generation of trees to continue the cycle.

The busy harvest season is winding down, most of the crops are in the silos and barns, or on their way to market.  It’s time to pause and be thankful, then time for a rest and waiting time, until the wheels of the season turn again the spring and we begin again.  Happy Thanksgiving!

 

The Wind's Gift

 

The wind left me a gift yesterday.  As I got in my truck after church, I found a perfect oak leaf on my seat, painted by autumn.  One leaf, such a simple thing but so amazing.  It’s one of the things I love about fall – when the trees put on their party dresses and the air grows cool and quiet.  When I sit on my front porch, I can hear the silence.  The birds are subdued, the insects whisper and even the owls in the holler sound sleepy.  The autumn light is drifting lower in the southern sky and the stars take on more clarity, moving in their eternal journey across the heavens.  I feel sorry for city dwellers, who can seldom see the stars through the city lights.  There is a feeling of connection, looking at the big dipper and knowing that we are looking at the same group of stars that the stone age men saw.  Our ancestors sailed to the new world, guided in part by the constellations that have graced the sky since the beginning of time and will remain after we are gone.  Just like the changing of the leaves and the new buds that appear the following spring, we follow the familiar cycle of each year.

Just like the cycles of the seasons, we create our own traditions to go along with those cycles. In my little town, we have just passed a busy month, which seems to have come and gone at warp speed.  Halloween  is celebrated here with a vengeance, and this year the town square has been invaded by an army of skeletons.  Creativity flowed as businesses fought to outdo each other in decorating light poles.  We ran out of poles early on, so the creations spilled over into freestanding displays in grassy areas and even crept off the square to the highways leading to town.  Skelebrate Halloween was the theme and it was a joy to watch families tour the sidewalks, examining skeleton carpenters, auto repair skeletons, dentist and pharmacist skeletons, Edgar Allen Poe, Minnie Pearl, and the Wicked Witch (with a Toto skeleton  in her basket), even a skeleton horse pulling a buggy.  Then there was my favorite – Willie Nelson sitting beside our Minnie Pearl statue, strumming his famous guitar. 

Against this backdrop, back-to-back events took place, one old favorite  and the other in its first year.  A Haunted Tour of the Square led participants on a walk around town to hear spooky stories rooted in the town’s history, including a ghostly trip to the centuries-old town cemetery.  The following night it was the Halloween Parade, a particularly unique event invented by a Halloween loving family when their lawn decorating efforts outgrew their lawn over ten years ago.  Every year the parade seems to get a little bigger, the crowds seem to grow a little larger, and the amount of candy thrown off the floats and out of the cars boggles the mind.  It’s as much fun to watch the kids, many giving their Halloween costumes a trial run before trick or treat night itself, enjoying the floats and picking up the candy as it is to watch the parade.  I stood beside a family with two of the cutest little boys – a red-head and a tow-head and both dedicated harvesters of candy.  The red-head in particular with his backwards baseball cap was single-minded in his pursuit of the treats.   On the other side was a baby who looked to be about 6 or 8 months old.  I would love to have known what was going through her little mind as she watched the string of ghosts, goblins, giant pumpkins and other creatures fill the streets of Centerville.  After the parade, her young parents posed for pictures with their baby, so that even if she has no memory of her own about this night, she will know that she was there. It's one of life's great blessings to live in a place where so many people go to so much trouble just to make things fun for our kids!

By the actual night of Halloween, the skeletons were beginning to look a little bedraggled and the perfect weather for the previous weekend’s festivities had morphed into a cloudy, rainy evening.  Not to be deterred, a cavalcade of costumed trick or treaters took to the streets, tramping up and down the pavement calling “Trick or treat.”   There is no way to estimate numbers, but my friends who live on the most popular trick or treat street ran out of candy by 6:30. 

And so, with the turning of the calendar page, November is here.  Jack-o-Lanterns are replaced by turkeys and pilgrims and thoughts turn to making apple pies and cornbread dressing.  The trees are shedding their party clothes and a carpet of red and gold covers the yard.  Daylight savings time ends – tell me again why we keep doing this – and afternoons are way too short.  Now, if I can just remember what size turkey I bought last year and where I put the extra tablecloths.