Bits and pieces of posts that didn’t get finished. And are
now sadly out of date. Too bad.
Early October
Around Canada’s
Centennial year it was decided by a symbol-mad federal government that Canada
should have an official tartan of its very own. This is the design that was
chosen, selected because of the colours, the colours of the trees in the
deciduous hardwood forests in the fall. When I was coming back from grocery
shopping today I came over a hilltop and looked at a spread of colours that
almost matched the tartan.
We had a wonderful
week of fall weather here. Temperature in the mid-twenties, crystal blue sky,
blazing trees, blood-red sumac, sumptuous purple asters. Even the blue jays
(not the baseball-playing kind) that our poet promises us. We live in eastern
Ontario, on the edge of the Canadian Shield, in maple syrup country. The sugar
maples turn red and gold, the red maples preceding them with a deeper tone. The
birch turns gold. The evergreens stay … green. On another such perfect fall day
many years ago I was lucky enough to be taking a low local flight from Montreal
to Ottawa and we flew over miles of tree tartan, glowing in the late afternoon
sun.
In some years,
especially when there has been a dry spell in late summer, we get very little
colour. The leaves turn brown and brittle and crumble off the trees. This year
we have had lots (and lots) of rain and the asters, the ‘farewell summer’s of
PEI lore, are big and lush and numerous. We have both a very dark purple and a
light, almost lilac, shade. And a few goldenrod are hanging on to provide some
contrast. The fields are gold and brown with corn, sorghum and soy beans ready
for harvest. And the trees are blazing.
When we have a bit of
wind and the leaves dance. Piles of gold and red collect under the trees, drift
and then swirl, drop gently and lift again. Miss G and her Grandpa went out
crunching along the back trails, walking the dog and marking ‘UG’ trees for
firewood. They took a knapsack full of water and snacks and dog biscuits, and
obediently toted JG’s cell phone since it now works in our back bush, thanks to
new towers in the neighbourhood. Miss G and the dog race through the leaves,
finding salamanders and good smells, mud and adventure.
Mid October
I wrote that in the first week of October. Shortly afterwards
the halcyon weather was replaced by cold rain that brought down some of the
leaves and rendered the bush trails soggy. We returned Miss G to her parents,
along with her almost completed Hallowe’en dress that she has worked so hard to
make. It has a gathered yoke and sleeves, a collar and yards of material and
she has learned some new skills pinning it all together. This weekend we
returned the dog and cat to their ‘mommy’, not before the dog wrecked her brand
new haircut by rolling in something unspeakable just before we were about to
load her into the car.
I got a superb dinner out of it, though, as it is JG’s 75th
birthday and the offspring decided to celebrate this event by taking him out to
a sumptuous restaurant. Miss G made a spice cake with cream cheese icing (‘from
scratch, Grama’) on which we all made pigs of ourselves.
And that lined us up for Thanksgiving, a festival when the
family all wants to come out to the bush and hike and enjoy the autumn while I
cook. So I cooked. For the Hall events, for the Thanksgiving feast. I was a bit
unsure of how many people I was feeding for Thanksgiving and so I bought an 18
lb turkey. Even with sending a lot home, we ate cold turkey for quite some time
afterwards. Ah, well. I made blueberry pies for the Hall dinner and one, as
usual, ran over badly, causing my husband to have a pie all his own. Good
thing, too, since the Hall dinner was swarmed and we ran out of meat. Should
have saved half a turkey, I guess. It is a fine art to figure how much food you
need for 350 people and we got fooled this year because we had two bus loads of
deer hunters from the next county and they were very hungry men. But, that was
November. I am getting ahead of myself.
The YD was sent on a business trip to the Antipodes and so
we got the animals back in mid October for a couple of weeks. The joys of dog
walking in the rain. The joys of floor cleaning after dog walking in the rain.
The dog is a burr magnet and I did a lot of brushing, which she tolerates
except for her nose. The cat decided that the plush blanket I keep on the
living room couch was really hers and so if I wanted to take a nap with blankie
I had to have the cat on my lap as well. Not much of a nuisance except when I
tried to use the iPad. This she regards as a rival gray rectangular cat, making
it hard to distinguish between my finger and her nose on the keyboard.
We also got the grandkid and her mother back for a day to help
JG stack the winter woodpiles under cover beside what we call the ‘wood door’
in our walk-out basement. The ED stacks at the speed of forked lightning,
causing her dad to huff and puff along behind her. So now we are equipped for
cold weather, with both stove wood (our fall heating source) and furnace wood.
We have a forced air wood furnace with electric backup for the really cold
months. Stocking up the fuel for both of these is a year round job for JG. The
ED took a bit of time off to photograph Miss G in all the glory of her
completed costume, trying to find a rustic enough background to suit the period
of the mob cap etc. We came close, but there is a set of pneumatic tires in
some of the shots.
Edited shot
The original shot
During this section of October all of the leaves (more or
less) fell down and were vacuumed up by
JG and dumped into piles to compost. I even got my last perennial bed sort of
cleaned up, but I am going to have to lift the iris corms in the spring to get
the bed clear of weeds. As the glorious cloud of colour transforms itself to a
crunchy carpet, a wise person prepares herself for five months of grey and cold
and snow and ice and ……….. Maybe some
year I will be able to do that.
Coda
And now it is November and snowflakes are dancing outside my
window. The forecast is for -8ºC overnight and I will have to dump the last
geraniums that have held on and bloomed all month on the front porch, somewhat
protected from overnight frosts. It is Hunting Season and the orange leaves have
been replaced by orange jackets and caps and the roar of four wheelers transporting
the orange people to their bush stands. The camp next to us does not have any
doe tags this year, so the dainty mothers with their leggy fawns will be left
in peace. The season is two weeks here, and once they are gone a wintry quiet
will descend on the woods and fields although the chickadees and nuthatches
have returned to the feeders, as have the greedy jays, and there are lots of woodpecker
calls and drumming to be heard.
And the roar of the chainsaw as JG works on 2016’s firewood.
