Sitting in the music room teaching I looked out the window and noticed an eerie long garland of brittle brown leaves swinging back and forth in the breeze. They were held together by an invisible thread making it Halloween worthy. Each day I make a point of noticing them and each day the garland grows.
For a while we feel summer’s tight grip, then the leaves lose their green, relinquishing to color, dangling until they can hang on no longer and there is change.
The signs of true autumn are everywhere now. Pumpkins squat on doorsteps, their flesh scooped clean. They bear the triangular slashes of young artist’s hands. Every-other dooryard has a large pile of wood waiting to be split. Stout chunks crisscrossed to hold their place in line for the splitter. If you wait long enough, someone will come out, hands in gloves, and begin working on their wood pile. It is a matter of pride, and necessity, to get wood stacked before snow touches ground.
We can’t languish in bed on Sunday mornings, we must be up and working on putting our garden to bed. We use our spading fork and bare hands to unearth potatoes. The small chunks that we buried in spring have multiplied and we delight in the variety of shapes, sizes and colors laying on top of the darkened earth. Lacy, fragrant, green fronds wave above the barely visible orange bump of carrots. We never know if we will pull a foot or inch long carrot until we do. I snap the greens and haul them to the chickens who, seeing me coming, race to the fence. They toss them into the air and snap off bites as they come back down, chattering to each other the entire time.
My second coming of peas offers Sunday night supper and we leave the kale alone to continue to prosper in the colder months. We haul our tomato wagon up the pasture to dump its soil into our manure pile. The buckets will be washed with light bleach to ward off blight next season. Jars of bright red sauce line our freezer.
As we are finishing, we are beginning. We bring our cardboard box of new Music garlic to the garden. Throughout the empty beds we will place the new cloves and cloves from our harvest finger-deep, tucking them in under soil and manure. Come spring when we are thinking planting thoughts, there will be stalks already rising from the cold earth. A promise.
Early in the week I make a trip into Montpelier. For months it has been difficult to go to our town, to see the ravages of the July flood. When I drive down Main street this week, there is change. Signs, balloons decorate newly renovated stores. Shoppers poke their heads in to see the new flooring, talk to the owner and acclimate to what is different.
On the corner, my favorite jewelry store remains dark. A flapping paper sign taped to the door reads “Space for Rent.” The post office remains tightly closed and our movie theater marquee asks us to remain Vermont Strong.
I walk into our bookstore and it looks and smells different. The old wood floor that creaked under our feet is gone, a new, modern laminate floor lying in its place. I don’t like it. Some of the people behind the counter don’t look familiar and I don’t like that either.
The only certainty in life is that things will change. Flood waters will come and wash streets clean. What will rise from the devastation becomes the natural evolution of things. The darkened jewelry store will be lit again by a new business. The closing of one dream allows the opening of another.
I’m not good at change. I feel that I comprehend differences but I don’t accept them. I want my bookstore to look and smell like it always did. I want to walk into my coffee shop and see Nora.
I understand the need to put our garden to bed but I’d like to know it will come back up looking exactly like it did this summer. Predictability equals safety.
When we push our garlic cloves deep into the soil, we do so armed only with hope. The cloves that we begin with can never guarantee what will come forth in the spring. The leaves that swing from the invisible string outside of my window have died and cannot return. Pre-July Montpelier has been washed away.
The leaves drop and there is death but the tree remains. In the spring buds will appear and new leaves will unfurl. Although they may look the same, they are not. But I do get another chance to sit beneath that tree and enjoy its cool, green shade.