Autumn

 

September 20, 2020

The sky is the most stainless, serene azure from horizon to horizon. The air is on that line between cool and a little too warm, cool in the shade, too warm if you’re exerting in the sun. The upsides of the leaves flash with white fire. Two remarkable days in a row. I’ve stopped listening for the sea and worrying about waking the others in the house. Two days of effort in the garden, the most this year by far, and the thing to say about that is that I have done so without being out of breath and being no more tired than a man of threescore and ten ought to be. Yesterday when I began my labors, I felt a tightening where I presume my diaphragm to be. I had been stretching, so thought maybe it was just soreness, but it disappeared, and its disappearance was like a tight band being loosed of a sudden from my chest. I have no more explanation to give than that, but must report faithfully that I have worked the last two days as I could before the weakness and poverty of breath came upon me, before the anemia and whatever else has been ailing me. Stopped when I finished, and not when I could stand no more. Yesterday I cleaned out the west garden, behind the dogwoods, and began a new shade garden. Went to Reems Creek for hydrangea and camellia and turtlehead and anemone and other shade-lovers. Came back also with joe-pye and spice bush that love the sun, but there was room elsewhere for them. Today I tackled the honeysuckle tangle that the northwest corner had become, ripping out vines to a pile the size of a haystack, freeing plants I had forgotten were there. When I was tired of that, I went back and finished off, for the moment, the shade garden, watering, planting spring bulbs, mulching, ripping out the tangle of vines that shielded against the house. Something in the weather or the soil has made extreme weeding conducive, the stubborn vines pulling out to the last micron of their roots.  

Meanwhile, in the hours of dark indoors, I wrote well and productively.

I’d been thinking of returning to painting, wanting to, literally dreaming of it, but realizing that if I wanted to return to oils, I’d have to have a dedicated space, as it’s too messy and too fumey for either home or the river office. When I rose this morning, I found my colored pencils and gave myself a tutorial, discovering what they could do, how they could shade and bend and produce other effects of painting. The experiment was exhilarating. Maybe that too shall return to me.

Went to clean out the almost-spent zinnias, but a cloud of goldfinches was still harvesting their seeds, so I let be. Sat so still on the porch that a thrush drank from the urn five feet away.