Amazed With Mystery

“Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.”

Robert Browning

Yes it is fall.  It doesn’t hit you, it is very sneaky. The bumblers are hanging tightly to the last of the bee balm. So cold they are some times motionless. I have to touch them and breathe on them to get them going. Smoke is coming from the neighbors stacks; the sweet smell of burning fir or birch. Mist hovers over the lake in the morning and a sneaky frost covered the car windows this week. Not a killing frost just a light sparkling announcement card that winter is coming. That’s the problem with fall. It is a downward spiral of decay that it sugarcoats itself in brilliant colours, is respite from blazing hot summer days, and offers a reward of harvest before throwing us knee-deep into winter.

I have written before on how much I love trees and the relationship I have with them. I always find it sad when we lose or have fall more on our property. We lose them to disease and a combination of disease and weather.

This summer we felled three trees. One from a lightning strike, and two from disease. When a tree falls  it makes a horrendous thump. Here, nothing goes to waste. Branches cut and mulched, the tree bucked for  fire wood.

Fall is all about preparation. Hay, straw and feed in the barn. Frost blankets to get the most from our vegetable garden. Cutting back of the perennial garden, thinking about how we can change it or make it better next year. Fall has an element of hope in it.

With my twice weekly walkabout in search of errant thistle I was surprised by these lovely white flowers and the beautiful coloured lichens and moss.