The month is coming to an end as the warmest September on record, and the state drought monitor has labeled us “abnormally dry.” The garden is looking a little droopy and so am I. It was one of those weeks that, while not insanely busy, was constantly busy and had little down time. James and I both arrived at Friday night a bit shellshocked and zombie-like. The weekend has been restful, but not rejuvenating. The body feels fine, but mentally I long for a stretch of days in which I have nothing planned and nothing that has to be done. I think that’s usually called a vacation? I have a solid two weeks of vacation scheduled for the end of December, and even though it will be here before I know it, it still seems far away.
The warm month has been messing with my seasonal senses. It is clearly autumn—the leaves are turning, the light has changed, the birds are migrating—but it feels like August. I want to put on a sweater and curl up with a pastry, hot drink, and a good book. I just want to be cozy, but the weather is not cooperating. Maybe that’s why I feel so tired, it’s the dissonance between expectation, desire, and reality.
What I have been enjoying this week are the birds. Goldfinches mainly. The hyssop is going to seed and the goldfinches are all over it, chowing down. They are on the tall yellow coneflowers in the front yard too. Such a pleasure to watch and their cheerful chirping is music to my ears, never failing to make me smile.
Can you find the goldfinch?
I have learned some bird hierarchy while watching the water dishes on the deck. The goldfinches will be drinking and a chickadee will swoop in and chase them away. I am surprised by this since chickadees are pretty much the same size as the goldfinches, but they puff up, stick out their chests, and aggressively hop at the finches who then fly away, ceding the water dishes to the chickadee.
But then a couple of sparrows come swooping in and chase off the chickadee.
Waiting in the wings is a little chipmunk. Once the birds have left, the chippy comes up for a quick drink.
Squirrels are still visiting the water too, but they seem to be fewer than in the spring. I see them running around the garden and one of them devoured one of the ripe pumpkins sometime between sunrise when the chickens were let out of the coop and late morning when I went to out to pick it. Perhaps because there is so much critter activity in the garden, the squirrels are not able to dominate it like they did earlier in the season? I’m probably delusional and they are all secretly plotting something that will take me by surprise.
Garden harvest–so colorful!
I did get three small pumpkins. These are naked bear pumpkins. The seeds have no hulls—pepitas—but the pumpkin flesh on this variety is also supposedly pretty tasty. I’ll find out after I let them cure for a couple weeks.
The butternuts are also getting ripe. I’ve got three picked and two more on the vines. Not bad! Growing them up a wooden ladder turned out to work really well and I will be doing it again next year. The variety is “North Circle” from North Circle seeds, and is good for shorter growing seasons.
I’m thinking about growing sorghum next year. The amaranth—the eff you plants—I grew a couple years ago thinking I would harvest the seeds for grain, but the seeds turned out to be incredibly tiny and threshing the seed heads and separating seed from chaff is so tedious and time consuming, that I gave up trying to use them for grain. They continue to happily seed themselves around the garden and their leaves make a decent salad green early in the season, but other than that and their amusing middle finger, they are weedy and somewhat of a nuisance. But sorghum, maybe? The grain is larger and I can grow pole beans up a taller variety. To thresh it, one can allegedly put the seed head into a pillow case and beat it with a stick. Presumably since the grain is larger, it is fairly easy to separate it from the chaff? Then there’s the possibility of making syrup from the stalks, but that is secondary at the moment. If you have experience with it, please let me know! I wish I could grow corn, but squirrels make that impossible.
Reading
- Humor: McSweeney’s was kind enough to send me an email reminding me that It’s Decorative Gourd Season Motherfuckers. This never gets old!
- Poem: Dedicated to All Human Beings Who Suffer by Yang Licai
- Blog: The Nine Lies of the Fake Green Fairytale by Jem Bendell. “Our vulnerability to self-deception has been hijacked by the self interests of the rich and powerful, to spin a ‘fake green fairytale’. Their story distracts us from the truth of the damage done, that to come, and what our options might be. Indeed, their fairytale prevents us from rebelling to try to make this a fairer disaster, or a more gentle and just collapse of the societies we live in.”
- Book: On Strike Against God by Joann Russ. This is a republication of a not science fiction novella by Russ. It includes a great introduction, an interesting critical essay afterward, a couple essays by Russ, and a letter from Russ to Marilyn Hacker and a letter from Hacker to Russ talking about On Strike Against God. The novella itself is a bit dated, but remains historically interesting, has some good humor, and lots of literary references. It’s a good and worthwhile “collection” if you are interested in Russ or 1970s lesbian feminism.
Quote
Landscape has a dangerous and deceiving repose, unlike cats or dogs who have eyes with which they can (gulp!) look right at you and sometimes do just that, as if they were persons, looking out of their own consciousness into yours and embarrassing and aweing you. Wild animals are only mobile landscape. Until you learn better, you think that a landscaped world can’t hurt you or please you, you needn’t bother about its soul, you needn’t be wary of its good looks.
Until you learn better.
~Joanna Russ, On Strike Against God, page 51
Listening
- Podcast: The Way Out is In: Bridging Being and Doing. After my busy week this podcast was exactly what I needed to hear. They discuss the practice of being and doing and how being is doing. The takeaway gem for me was the idea that one’s quality of being affects one’s quality of doing. In other words, being is the foundation of doing, and your being has a direct impact on everything you do.
Watching
- Rewatch: Pride and Prejudice. Thirty-five years ago Colin Firth blessed us with a swim in a pond. Oh, and also some fine acting with a fine cast, one of whom had a pair of fine eyes. We watched the first episode Friday night and it remains as delightful as it was the first time I saw it and wore out my VHS tape set and was thrilled when DVDs were invented because I couldn’t wear those out. It’s been ages since I’ve watched it, and now I am looking forward to episode two next Friday night.
James’s Kitchen Wizardry
We bought a pie pumpkin and James cooked it up this weekend, made some pumpkin butter, froze some puree for pumpkin pie later, and roasted the seeds with pumpkin spice. I have all the ingredients for cozy except the weather!
https://astoneintheriver.net/2024/09/29/yearning-for-cozy/
#amaranth #autumn #butternutSquash #chickadees #goldfinches #pumpkins #sorghum #sparrows