Indian Summer

A week has passed since my last post and cleanup from Irma has been completed on our property, after a long day of picking up branches on Friday but thankfully no other damage.  Trucks continue to haul brush down the Walhalla Road to the landfill every day, however, and all over Town we can hear the sound of chainsaws blending in with the usual early-fall leaf-blowers.   Most of the trees that were destroyed seem to be hardwoods - maples and oaks - so pickup trucks are also busy loading up the sudden unexpected bounty of firewood.  I joined in by cutting several three-foot long segments of a big white oak limb that providentially appeared below our property, destined for shiitake-mushroom inoculation in the spring now that our old mushroom logs seem to have finally played out.

It has turned unusually warm and summer-like - Indian Summer, although it may not be technically correct to call it that because fall will not arrive until tomorrow.  The ear protection and gloves dug from the running-clothes cupboard a couple of weeks ago are back in the cupboard again, and the mornings have been humid; beautiful diagonal curtains fall across the road.

It was in the 80s on Sunday, and in the upper 70s yesterday, so warm that thunder announced the surprising arrival of an afternoon thunderstorm yesterday and today.  We were looking out our western windows yesterday, Martha in her upstairs office and I in my downstairs study, when the wind sprung up and leaves began swirling down madly from the big tulip poplar in the front yard, a sudden flurry of yellow and brown leaves, perhaps weakened by the hurricane and letting go earlier than usual.

My friend Anne posted this photo of the trees along Fifth Street at the Presbyterian Church and said that they were always her gauge of approaching fall; this year they seemed to change overnight.

Now that the magnificent red maple on the Walhalla Road at Mitchell's Motel has been toppled by Irma, my own gauge is these burning bushes across from the Lakeside Restaurant - so gorgeous!

It is an almost unsettling time of year, this little break between the seasons, as if we were trying to go from one classroom to another across some campus in nature, still remembering the lessons of the last seminar while we walk briskly toward the next lesson we will learn.