Simple Living | It's Autumn

October bulbs, a soaking rain, garden's last harvest

The window washers are coming in a week to clean summer’s dust and etchings of water droplets from the glass, to clear the view for the riotous color sweeping across the trees. Deeply golden, nearing orange, it overtakes the green in these fleeting autumn weeks, and I cannot look away.

In a lull in this blessed, blessed, blessed rain, I dig the carrots and gather the last of the tomatoes still clinging to the vine. I snip the hearty chard that’s refused the first nips of frost, and I shear all the parsley right down to the ground. The last harvest. Yesterday’s rain became last night’s snow on the mountains and there’s the garden’s end.

I order bulbs. Under the wire, and yes, there were varieties sold out, and yes, I always think I’ll order in August and I never, ever do. I wait until October. Until the urgency builds and the chances slim and there are fewer varieties to choose from. Let’s not analyze this. Let’s just be thrilled that bulbs are on their way, trotting through the mail as we speak. And come spring, I won’t even remember what I thought I missed out on with those other varieties, so taken will I be by the beauty blooming right here under my nose.

I unwrap the bulk candle order from its plain brown paper and hang the taper pairs on a hook for keeping. In the inky hours of the calendar’s coming pages, there will be candlelight. Later, I lie in bed, mentally tallying my socks, wondering if I might need to add a few (I have two). I don’t know, it seems important that I have enough socks. But really, it’s not just the socks, its the candles, the salt and flour for the larder shelves, the whole chickens and packaged beef for the deep freeze, the batteries in the drawer, the bandaids in the box - everything, everything is getting the once-over to see what needs stocking-up.

Then, there’s Sunday afternoon and the sound of football in the background (gosh, I miss my boys) and all I want to do is curl up under a throw at the end of the sofa and knit. Somehow, over all those years, fall and football and knitting wove themselves together in my life and I can’t seem to do one without doing all three. I have the yarn, I have the needles, I just need to choose the project.

I peel the potatoes, scrub the carrots, season the sirloin that’s been cut into cubes. Chop the onion, slice the garlic, mince the parsley. Dredge the meat through a mound of flour, and toss it into a sizzling pot to sear. The caramelized bits at the bottom of the pot become the broth when swooshed with a couple quarts of water. Put everything into the pot together, then, season with more salt and freshly cracked pepper, and slide it into a low oven, covered, to bubble through the late afternoon hours. It’s stew season, loves.

It’s autumn.