A few visions of autumn at Wazoo. . .no pictures of the colorful leaves (yet) but a child in a corn maze up at a creamery/farm. Here's my maze-partner, JM, who calls me "Aunt Kim" (isn't that fine?)--with her I wandered through stalks and learned that cows have four stomachs and a full-grown Holstein weighs far more than 950 pounds. . .
and then there's my favorite, cosmos, as happy as if it it were July. Cosmos never lets me down, probably because it is technically a weed. I love weeds. They don't make a big fuss about themselves; they're just happy to be alive.
And they're tenacious little suckers. This is also why I secretly love our groundhog, Grassy Sam, who has been with us many years now. Enormous rodent though he be, he found a way up to the table where we were housing Merry's prize pumpkin, beautifully orange and plump with a smooth skin. He ate a huge hole (seemed partial to the seeds) as he sat on our table. Thanks to visiting friend "Uncle Jeff" for the picture.
So we moved the pumpkin (we figured we could still carve part of it into a jack 'o lantern) to the front porch and. . .something else ate it. Possibly Rocky Raccoon found it there--he is a menace I could do without, since he is cheeky enough to come in the back door to our enclosed porch for our trash. Grassy Sam, I like to think, has better manners than this. For instance, he never molests our main garden, though he could; and we are fairly good natured about letting him roam about the back yard. I did shoo him away from the red raspberries one year, and as far as I can tell, he hasn't been back.
I figure, if you're going to be a rodent, you should be a big one. The poor and awful field mice have been fleeing the harvesters and I keep seeing their blackened carcasses around town, one in our driveway and another on a sidewalk. The Wazoo cats (none of whom I know by name, none of whom are friendly or seem to care about us, but who prowl around the garden like royalty) keep them at bay--we haven't had a mouse problem in the house for years. That may also be in thanks to Sammy the Snake and his prolific offspring.It's a jungle out there, I tell you, but nothing like my friend, Tonya's country lands where she almost gets run down by cows in the night and then horses the next night and then has to pound a rabid 'possum on the head with a flashlight and bury him early the next morning. That is exactly why I am a townie--3/4 of an acre is pushing it for us, but really it's the perfect size to tuck flowers and herbs and trees in helter-skelter and have it be alright.
Okay, just one little leaf picture.
Our magnificent maple. She's almost bare and the sound of the wind through her crisp leaves seems from another world--I puzzled over it for a while the other day. Is it a rushing sound, or a whoosh--does it sound like the ocean or a thousand birds flying through the sky--and I've come to conclusion that it sounds just like a strong autumn wind blowing through hundreds of dried yellow maple leaves. I love that tree. She wouldn't nod at any of my metaphors. And so a rodent is a rodent, a weed is a weed, and a maple is a maple. And with those deep thoughts, lovlies, plus a picture of Elspea hard at work in the playhouse, I bid you goodnight.
