Autumn

Beloved:

      With the bluest skies and perfect air, autumn has officially fallen.  I pulled up my cucumber vines yesterday, harvested the good ones and fed the rest to the chickens, vines and all.  My tomatoes have slowed considerably, the ones worth picking are much smaller.  The deer invaded  my front  beds, eating both fruit and leaves so that they hardly seem like tomato plants now.  The purple zinnias carry on, their stems have turned woody and sometimes tip over with their own weight.  My neighbor traded me 10 pumpkins for two dozen eggs and we both felt like winners. 

     I play at farming, putting up tomatoes, peppers and beans for winter; knowing full well the goal is flavor, not survival.   I quilt and knit for fun, not warmth.  We’ve no physical needs money cannot meet.  And yet, the work feels like something other than a hobby, as though my body and spirit need it to be right in the world.  I come from people who lived and thrived by farming.  None were rich. How poor they were depended on the weather and the price of corn any given year.  My grandmother paid for things with eggs.  Can the need to repeat the tasks, even in the smallest form, pass through generations, like being left-handed? 

      Frost is a few weeks off yet..  Before then I will cut and hang herb bunches on a string in the basement.  It’s for fun of course since I’ll actually use hardly any..  But it pleases me to look at them in winter, and remember them growing by the steps, full of scent and alive with the sound of honey bees. 

       I pray the Autumn is full of life for you and yours, that you have work that gives you pleasure and history that gives you strength.  ~peace & prayers, pastor annette