My favorite Season

Fall is my favorite season.  I love the wind that comes through, cleaning the leaves off the trees, and blowing in the freshest of air.  I love the party colors so many plants wear.  And most of all, I love that after all of the various disappointments of the summer season, Fall offers hope.

Yes, hope.  In the Fall.  I think that some people feel hopeful in the spring.  Or at least I think that spring is traditionally associated with hope.  But for me, the spring is so full of frenetic energy that I end up feeling tired and overwhelmed.  I do like the spring, but it is non-stop 15 hour a day energy.  The birds and the plants barely sleep, and neither do I.

Fall on the other hand, is refreshing.  It is dark enough that there are plenty of hours to sleep.  And there is a feeling of winding down as the plants go into their dormant season.  The earth takes deep, easy breaths, and I feel myself unwinding too.

And I feel renewed Hope.  For at this time of year, it doesn't matter how bad the summer weather was.  It doesn't matter how many insects descended on the broccoli, or why the squash got blossom end rot.  It doesn't matter because next year is a whole new year, with new possibilities.

As I put goat manure on the now empty vegetable beds, I can day dream about what I will grow next year.  I envision a row of purple carrots, and heirloom tomatoes.  And in my day dreams, the sun shines all summer, the insects don't eat too much of my crops and fungus' never materialize.  In the whirling wind and falling leaves of Fall, I weave delicious dreams of next year's garden.

Pumpkin Patch

We finally got to the pumpkin patch!  We are lucky to have a beautiful farm, Suyematsu Farms, only a few minutes away from us.  And lucky they had some pumpkins left for us to look at.  Our unusually cool summer wasn't the best for growing squashes of any kind, let alone giant pumpkins.  Thankfully the farmers are much better at growing vegetables than I am!

A basket of funky looking squash

A beautiful cinderella pumpkin

A bright orange harvest

Grace and Emily

Sophie 

Fog Cathedral

Yesterday morning, I was given a view that was so beautiful, it literally stopped me in my tracks.  We've been having some gorgeous Fall days this week.  Foggy mornings that burn off to crisp, blue sky days, and nights resplendent with a full moon and bright stars.

I was working down by the water and most of the fog had burned off.  But as I walked up the drive to the upper garden, the sun was shining through the woods and the last bits of mist.  With the sun as a backlight, the tree suddenly looked luminous, with the rays of sunshine dispersing around it like a star. I didn't have my camera, so my cell phone picture, though poor in quality, will have to do. But even so, I'm not sure I could have captured the beauty or the peace of this fog cathedral.

Spider Season

Water droplets illuminate this web in my garden

I am terrified of spiders, which is really inconvenient as I'm a gardener.  I've worked hard on overcoming this fear, and I don't freak out about them quite like I used to, but still, spiders give me the heebie-jeebies.

Rationally, I know they aren't going to wrap me in their webs and suck my blood, but still, I feel that they would if they could.  And I know it's completely irrational to be afraid of something that is so much smaller than I am.  But then again, these types of fears are rarely rational.

I do OK with spiders in the spring time.  They just aren't as "in your face" as they are right now and they seem to be smaller. Throughout the spring and summer, we get along fine.  At least outside.  Spiders in the house, or heaven forbid, on my clothes or bedding, literally make me shriek and call for help. But outside, I see them as part of the whole garden and I politely work around them.

Come August and September, the spiders get bigger and build their webs seemingly overnight.  And frequently they hang their webs right outside my front door, between paths, on my car--pretty much every place where I run right into them! Each year, I have to mentally work myself into this spider season. I remind myself of the good they do and their right to spin webs where they like, even as I shudder and shriek when I walk into one of their webs.

The ironic part of my spider fear is that even though they absolutely terrify me, I actually don't like to hurt them.  The truth is that I'm strangely fascinated by them.  I watch them weave their webs, and wonder at how they seem to know exactly how long to make each strand of web before connecting it to the whole piece.  Their webs are nearly perfectly symmetrical.  An engineering marvel.  And of course the gardener part of me is thankful to them for the work they do.  I am happy they eat their way through annoying flies with their delicate but strong traps.

But until this spider season is over, I will continue to walk around the garden with my hands in front of my face, shrieking if I end up with a spider on my shoulder.   And, entranced by the beauty of a web lit up with rain droplets.

Goat Wisdom

A day in the sunshine.  And I should clarify, a warm day in the sunshine which is a bit rare for mid-October on Bainbridge Island.  It was a gorgeous day today and because we know we are headed into the dark and rainy days of winter, it can be easy to spend a day like this "getting something done".  But the goats showed us today that we don't have the right idea at all.

The goats know exactly how to spend a day in the sunshine.  Around lunch time we found them all snoozing, sound asleep.  Sweet Pea was sleeping standing up, with her head pressed against the tire for support.  Silver was cashed out on the upside down metal feed trough, with sound asleep Lily cuddled next to him.  And Blackberry had a coveted spot on the goat version of the sun porch.

The goats don't think, they just do.  The sun warmed up their fur until they felt nice and drowsy, and so they dozed.  Right where they were.  They looked so peaceful and happy.  And once again, I found myself thinking that they are very smart creatures.  I still have a lot to learn from them.    

The Most Amazing Music Teacher

We have the most amazing music teacher.  She comes to our house.  She is young.  She is fun.  She is a fantastic teacher.  The kids love her.  And she is completely OK with the chaos of our home.

For our first lesson with her, which was over a year ago, I made sure the house was somewhat orderly.  I did the dishes, tried to move the stacks of homework and mail into a corner, and made sure the family room couch was cleared of toys.  This was so new to have our piano teacher come to us, and of course I wanted her to feel like a guest.

By the next lesson, my veil of "cleanliness" was already slipping.  The dishes were all over the counter and I apologized for the mess.  She insisted that she didn't mind and actually felt most comfortable in houses that were messy.  She said the really clean houses freaked her out a bit--they weren't normal.  I loved her even more.

And by the third lesson, my charade was done.  Not only did we have boxes stacked in the hallway as a result of trying to sort out the girls' clothes, and stacks of paper everywhere, but we now had the look of construction too.  We are finally done with our big remodel project (and she missed the phase where we had a huge hole in our house) but for the past year, she's seen a lot of projects in process around here.  In fact, she comes each week and says she looks forward to seeing what we are working on.

And now today, as she arrives for Grace's piano lesson, Emily and Sophie are in the midst of trying to fix the computer problem that Sophie created on Emily's computer.  They aren't arguing exactly, but our house of three girls is about as noisy as they come.  Our music teacher, as happy and positive as always, stands in the doorway, sees our chaos and says with a smile that she loves our noisy family.  She comes from a big family and says that she feels at home around families with at least three kids.  How could I love this girl more?  Not only does she share her knowledge and love of music to our kids, but she also manages to put a smile on my face as I look around and think yes, this is all good.  It truly is.