Sad so-long to Summer

Sunday morning dawned 20-something degrees. By the time I ventured onto the front porch, the temperature had creeped above 30, and the sun made it feel warmer than that. I am not ready, yet, to give up my weekend morning porch-sitting, coffee-drinking, reading-writing ritual. Of course, I’m not ready to give up many of summer’s bright spots. Alas, I can clearly see the writing on the wall – or at least the white of morning frost on the grass.

Two nights of that frost over the weekend, just before the Autumnal Equinox, did the garden in. Friday afternoon I picked all the green beans I could find, plucked one more cucumber from the vine, and harvested the last two small zucchinis. I cut all the zinnias in bloom and put them into a mason jar, where their colors have allowed summer to persist for a few more days.

On Sunday, I pulled frost-wilted plants from the vegetable garden, tilling the soil and pulling weeds. The garden looks tidy now, but barren, with only the green, frilly tops of carrots still standing. This year, the chore of putting the garden to bed seemed especially melancholy; in a year of so much strife and uncertainty, I’ve come to appreciate the colors and tastes of the garden more fervently than in past summers.

Saying goodbye to summer seems especially hard in 2020. But time stubbornly marches on.

Gone now are the bright early mornings; it’s dark these days when I wake, and the light fades soon after supper. Gone are the veggies picked fresh each day as needed. Gone are the lovely summer blooms, both cultivated and wild-growing, whose array of colors brightened the yard and our dining room table for months. Gone are the days of flinging windows open wide to sunshine and warmth.

I’ll make the transition, resistant as I am, to Fall. To cozy evenings and hearty soups, wrapping up in soft blankets and sipping hot cocoa, donning warm socks and extra layers against the chill. But I’m not quite there yet, not quite ready.

I’m holding out on putting the flipflops away. I’m hoping for a few more shorts-and-t-shirt days. And I’ll keep up with my weekend morning porch sitting for as long as I can. Here, the sun still warms me, even if I can see my breath in the chill morning air. The view of the mountains, now transitioning through Autumn’s ever-changing colors, still soothes and inspires. The birds – different ones now from spring, touching down briefly as they migrate from one place to another – still provide a welcome backdrop of sound. The dog, as always, keeps good company, making her daily rounds through the yard before settling at my feet and keeping watch for squirrels and other natural offenses.

Somehow, the coffee tastes better out here, and the news I read seems less jarring when taken in from my porch perch. I’ll pull my long down coat on if I must, and close the storm door behind me, then turn my face toward the sun – and the season that has, inevitably, arrived.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's September 24, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.  

Garden to Bed

It is a task I do reluctantly in the bittersweet transition from summer to autumn: cleaning out the gardens. Putting them to bed, some call it. It’s not that I don’t like the work. I do – being outside amid the changing colors of fall and the sounds of animals scampering about as they prepare for winter, digging in the dirt that has provided the bounty of summer, soaking up the fresh air and – if I’m lucky – a bit more sunshine.

Truckload of spuds

It’s just that the gardens stay abed for so long; emptying them of summer growth and goodness seems such a long goodbye.

After months of coaxing seeds, then shoots, then swelling plants to grow and bear fruit (or vegetables), after tilling and weeding and plucking off tomato suckers and thinning rows of baby carrots, it is a bit of an affront to pull it all out and throw the remains into the compost heap. Yet, there is something pleasing to restoring some semblance of order to the garden plots that have grown unruly since we sowed the first neat rows in springtime.

Last week’s frost killed anything that wasn’t covered, and a few things that were. The cold was a clear indication that it was time to set to work. The sprawling leaves of the zucchini plants, which had for weeks loyally provided a squash or three each day, turned black. The eggplants, which produced a multitude of pale purple flowers through the summer, but only one tiny fruit, withered to brown. The tomato vines drooped. The basil leaves, which had been a vibrant and warmly fragrant green only the week before, hung shrunken and brittle on brown stems.

I started with the small garden boxes in the side yard, which are easier to tidy than the large garden down back. Out came the wooden stakes that had bolstered the cherry tomatoes, and with them the frost-browned plants, whose vines and leaves and roots had grown intertwined with their neighbors through hot months in the sun. Even in their wasted state the plants were prolific, with tiny green tomatoes still clinging hopefully to narrow stems.

Out, too, came the pea trellis. The early peas have long since been happily consumed or packed into the freezer, but a few withered shoots still clung to the wire fencing. These I removed before rolling the trellis upon itself to store in the back corner of the garage through the long months of dark and cold.

Working around the row of small lettuces that may still grow big enough to eat, I tilled the little garden, breaking up clumps of earth compacted during the growing season, pulling out weeds that had flourished as they hid beneath the vegetables, dragging the long, white skeletal roots of tomato and pea plants from the dry, cool earth.

Occasionally one of my children would join me in the garden-cleaning effort. The youngest picked fallen cherry tomatoes in various hues from the dirt and chucked them into the field as she kept me entertained with a 5-year-old’s chatter and giggles. My son came down with his three-pronged weeder to help rake the chopped dirt smooth.

When I headed to the big garden with potato rake and spade in hand, all three kids trotted down to help with one of their favorite garden tasks: digging potatoes. Of all the magic a vegetable garden can provide for kids (and grown-ups), digging potatoes is probably the most fun: like searching for buried treasure.

As I pushed my spade into the soil, the kids stood by eagerly, focused on the turning dirt, seeking the pale yellow and red of spuds and racing each other to scoop them up. In keeping with our family’s potato-digging tradition, the kids placed the tubers into their yellow Tonka dump trucks, meant for the sandbox, but just as useful in the garden. So, while our potato crop this year was meager (and we had already eaten many of them), we still managed to haul two truckloads up to the house.

There are still lots of weeds in the potato patch. These I’ll yank out this weekend when the sun is supposed to regain some of its summer strength. I’ve left some green beans and cucumbers in place, but have become lazy in covering them against the nighttime chill, so they’ve nearly stopped producing and look more dead than alive. My late planting of shell peas has put out shoots and pods aplenty, but the peas within are slow to ripen in the shortening days. I have hope for the second and third crops of carrots, whose frilly green tops stand tall in the garden box with only a row of lettuce left for company.

Perhaps, then, we’ll pull a bit more goodness from the earth before the gardens are completely tucked in for the season, before we say our last goodbye to this year’s bounty and wait for the gardens’ awakening next spring.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the September 26, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Gathering Autumn

The heat kicked on one morning this week (with the thermostat set at a frugal 55 degrees) and there’s a possibility of snow in the weekend’s forecast. Like it or not – and I know plenty of folks on both sides – winter is coming.

The uncommon warmth of the mid-October days this fall lulled me into a sense of continued summer, even as the leaves dropped from the trees and the mornings grew dark. While I’ve been able to slack a bit in preparing for the coming cold, I’ve noticed the animals scurrying about, gathering autumn before it’s too late.

I can hardly drive down a back road these days without slowing for a squirrel scampering to hide his winter nuts. The woolly bear caterpillars, so plentiful a few weeks ago, have gone into hiding. We see bear and deer under the apple trees each evening, filling up on the season’s abundance. The summer cacophony of birdsong has faded to the occasional melancholy cooing of a family of mourning doves that has set up residence in the apple trees nearest the house and the stalwart chickadees who stick around all year.

Following the animals’ lead, I will pull the last of this year’s carrots from the ground this week and pick the final handful of green peas – both products of a Hail Mary planting made well past midsummer. The rest of the garden is cleared out, raked smooth, and put to bed for the coming winter, the bounty of wild blueberries from the summer tucked away in the freezer and the applesauce put up in the pantry.

It was an odd year for gardening and gathering. The summer started hot and wet, the heat luring me to plant early, the wet saturating many of those first seeds beyond the ability to sprout. And so the garden was a bit of a flop for much of the summer. The peas came in well and seemed to promise more good things to come, but they faded fast. The green beans were nearly nonexistent until my third planting, when persistence finally paid off with a decent, but not spectacular, harvest. The broccoli was a bust, the cucumbers sparse, the carrots so-so. I didn’t even have enough zucchini to give away.

Nature, on the other hand, provided in abundance all summer and into fall. We found the first wild blueberries the second week of July, and we picked through the final muggy breath of August. The blackberries provided a decent yield, just as the blueberries began to wither. And in nine summers at this house, I’ve never seen so many apples weighing down the branches of the gone-wild trees dotting the back field.

Feathered, furry, or bundled up in increasing layers of clothing, we all spend time during this in-between season gathering autumn, whether savoring the waning warmth of the sun or storing away the fruits of fall, tucking them into root cellars, dark freezers, or squirrels’ dens. As the bears load on an extra layer of fat, we dig out our winter boots and heavy jackets. As the woolly bears curl up against the cold, we replace screens with storm doors and windows. As the deer eat all the fallen apples they can find, we have cooked ours into sauce, filling the kitchen with the warm scent of cinnamon.

Even as I lament the passing of one season, I am usually ready to welcome the next. And, so, as I miss the colors of fall and bemoan the gathering darkness of the approaching season, I am also looking forward to winter. In the darkest days of the year, as the wild ones hide away, we’ll bundle up against the chill and head outside to ski and sled, build snowmen, and feather snow angels into the crystal whiteness.

By the time the winter solstice arrives, we’ll have mostly forgotten to miss warm days and green grass, distracted by the glow of Christmas tree lights and hot cocoa by a warm fire. And at winter’s end, just when it seems we can’t handle another gray day, leaf buds will form on tree branches, the first crocuses will poke through thawing ground, and the birds will return with their colors and songs, carrying with them the next season, another chance to savor new things and start all over again.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, published on her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay is also featured in Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 25, 2013 issue of the Littleton Record.

Farewell to summer

The light is changing, as it does each year when summer reaches towards fall.

In June, we welcome the light as it brightens, sharp sunshine that shimmers with heat and long days and summer plans. In July, it seems the brightness will last forever. And then, suddenly it always seems, it is late August. The dark of night seeps into each day a bit earlier. The sunlight is still strong, but somehow not as energetic as it was a week or two ago. The light is changing.

The first time I really noticed the alteration of late summer light I was on my mountain bike in Colorado, returning to town from a single track ride south of Crested Butte. The light was still bright, but seemed more golden than white as it sifted through the mountains onto the open valley floor. The air was heavy with autumnal hues, even as the grass and sage around us held fast to their summer green. It was almost magical, that light in the mountains, and a sure sign that summer was waning.

There was another ride there, near to my front door, short and mellow, and so a favorite for after-work evening jaunts. This trail looped along a river valley, through patches of aspen trees. A friend dubbed it the yellow room in the in-between season of almost-fall. There was the sweet mustiness then that comes with decaying leaves and cooler nights. The sun sank low over town, through the aspens, their leaves rustling and gilded. The air itself seemed golden there, as the late day, late season sunshine reflected from the winding river like a long, amber ribbon.

The landscape is less open here, in the mountains of New Hampshire, and so the change in light not quite as palpable. But the light is changing. Already we notice the darkness edging in just after dinnertime, the sun lazy in its morning rise, the nights cooler than we are, perhaps, ready to accept.

School starts next week, which means it’s fall, even if we’re still weeks away from Equinox. The ferns in the field have browned. The dense canopy of forest on the mountains, seen from afar, is already dulling from bright green toward muted gold as the leaves start their annual transition to red and yellow and russet.

It is a blessing to live in a place of seasonal changes, to be surprised so often by the signals of the changing seasons, even as we know they’re coming. It is hard to let go of the warmth and light and freedom of summer. This year, particularly, it seems I am not ready for the changes that come with fall: from calm mornings and unscheduled days to school routines and regimented hours, from heat and light to frost on the grass and dark evenings.

Perhaps we’ll squeeze in a little more pool time after school hours, savor a few more popsicles, dig our toes into the sun-warmed sand. But the signs are there; summer is on its way out. The light is changing. I will bask in its golden glow for as long as I can.

Cleaving to Sunshine

Amid the blaring colors of autumn, summer has returned fleetingly to northern New England this week. Last week we dug out the wool socks and fleece pullovers, uncovered the mittens and ski hats, and huddled by the fireplace as frost painted the lawn and fields in an overnight cover of cold white. But then heat returned, and with it flip-flops and tee-shirts and skin bared to the light.

We call this Indian Summer, and I’ve never been sure why. Who has time to wonder, as the dark of evening creeps closer to midday? We push ourselves outside, faces turned toward the sun, knowing all too well what comes next.

Don’t get me wrong, I love winter. Always have. Anyone who has chosen to make her home in northern New England is wise to embrace winter and its stark, white beauty. We can ski here – if we’re lucky – during at least six months of the year. But loving winter does nothing, for me anyway, to lessen the joys of these warm, bright days in October.

This is the season of country fairs, when we celebrate the beauty of fall and the bounty of the summer just gone by. We postpone putting in the storm doors, hoping for a few more days of the house flung open to outside warmth. We dodge the steady stream of leaf-peepers choking the roads and trails and return to more secret places for the season. We cover the tomatoes when frost threatens, hoping for one more harvest, and we put up a bit of the summer produce to enjoy in the darkness of winter. We stack firewood, rake leaves, cut back the flower gardens.

Even as we cleave to the sunshine, we know the icy winds and long nights of winter are coming.

As a final act of faith that summer will return to some distant time, we dig into the still-warm earth and plant bulbs, thinking beyond the depths of winter snow to the first blooms of spring, when color will return in the gentle purple of crocuses, the happy yellow of daffodils, the warm red of tulips.