Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...

by Carola Dunn

Is it autumn yet? Here in Oregon, no sign of mists at present. We're having a heatwave, in fact. But where mellow fruitfulness is concerned...

Somehow, in spite of our cold wet spring, chilly wet July, and two weeks of summer in August before it went away again, this:

...has been transformed into this:

Plums are turning purple; blackberries are in full flood; half my neighbours are giving away tomatoes and begging people to take the zucchini! Squirrels are gorging on hazelnuts and burying them in my lawn for the future. Later on, they'll come and dig holes all over the place looking for them. Only once in nearly twenty years here in Eugene have they left any for me to harvest. They think my job is pulling up seedlings growing from the nuts they didn't find.

My grapes are just beginning to ripen. The vine is incredible--Planted about 12 feet from the house, it stretches along a fence, over a gate, and then divides at the corner of the house to hang from the gutters 20 feet in one direction and more like 30 the other way. If I didn't cut it back constantly throughout the summer, it would have buried the house by now. Soon I'll be able to step out of my back door and pick grapes for breakfast.

Spring is my favourite season, but with autumn bringing such rich rewards, I'm happy to see it arriving, even when it brings those mists with it.

2 comments:

Jaden Terrell said...

What a beautiful place you have, Carola. I confess to being a bit envious, even though I have the brownest thumb on earth and would only leave devastation in my wake.

Fall came all of a sudden here. Woke up on Labor Day, and there it was.

Carola Dunn said...

August 31st felt like fall here, but the summer we didn't have before has now arrived.