Rain, Tardy Autumn, Clandestine Chocolate Consumption

This past weekend we bopped down to West Virginia to join my friend Kara and a passel of good people in the midst of tents and campfire smoke and amazing food (our last meal before departure consisted of falafel, two kinds of homemade hummus, olives and cheese, and pita bread.) The girls revelled in their first camping trip. Elspeth, absolutely filthy and stinky, ran around the campfire in a way that put ants in my feet soles; Merry threw herself into fire-making and delighted in her first real tent sleep in her Tinkerbell sleeping bag.

Down in that fairly cool hollow near Maryland, the leaves had actually begun to celebrate autumn. Our spirits sagged as we drove back north, into the heat, and Martin remarked dolefully, "The leaves are just drying up and turning brown. I'm afraid we won't have much of an autumn this year."

I am hoping Martin is dead wrong, though the heat has been oppressive and depressing this far into October. As in August, I have been closing windows and curtains in an attempt to capture the relative cool of the night in our house during the day. GLOOMY. I have dragged myself outside for brief spells in the garden. The overwhelming, sharp smell of cilantro gone-to-seed that I harvested this morning almost put me over the edge.

Brussel sprouts cling unnoticed to their stalks; tomatoes rot on their vine. I bypass those in favor of last yellow roses, a bucketful of feverfew, a few lonely stems of lavender. I will not be sorry to see the zinnias blacken and die, dropping their seeds into the ground for next year's spring. The sunflowers are drooping and picked-over by birds; soon the birds will look instead for handfuls of feed tossed into the shelter of their wee houses.

Our yard shows a small dusting of golden maple leaves, but the show this autumn so far is sad and anticlimactic. "Get used to it," Martin says grumpily, throwing new wood on the crackling blaze of angst, "We live in a warming world."

But wait--I bear great tidings. This afternoon, rain pelted from a dark sky. The girls and I stood in the open doorway, jumping deliciously at claps of thunder, watching the rain sweep down our street in sheets. And tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and so on, are forecasted cool, cooler, and cold. Never have I been so excited about pulling out sweaters at last. It jolly well better not be just here for two days again, either. Go away, gulf stream! Begone!

I celebrate now with a bowl of chocolate cookies, eaten secretly, upstairs in my office. Out of my window the walnut leaves are yellowing; the sky is full of cloud. Come frost, come candle-days, come shake-the-window wind. We're ready this time.