A Sunday Walk

Let's face it: this is not my kind of weather. Just under forty degrees and cloudy, with mizzly little showers off and on. Despite owning an array of cold-weather play clothes, there won't be any biking for me today. So I skim through The New York Times, check out PostSecret and reddit, breakfast, bind off the sleeve I've been knitting for two weeks, play a couple of Facebook games, cast on the front of the sweater, lunch…by noon, death by boredom seems like a genuine possibility.

Having endured the intense brown eye stare of a hapless border collie for the past three hours, Floyd texts a nearby friend and issues Travis out the door to head for the greenbelt to work on trails. No way around it, I'm going to have to go for a walk. Might as well collect some color on what at first glance looks like an afternoon drawn in an array of grays. I wrap myself up as if heading out on an expedition to the North Pole - including a hat, which I almost never wear - and force myself out the door.

The neighborhood is as deserted as a post-apocalyptic "Twilight Zone" episode. Not a cyclist, not a car, not a jogger, not a dog walker. Where is everybody? Here and there I catch the unmistakable tang of woodsmoke, so some people must be comfortable beside their fireplaces. Real woodsmoke is such a pleasant cold-weather scent that the chemical fumes from grocery store paper fireplace logs are horrid in contrast. 

I'm ambling along the streets where I usually ride my bike. As usual, once I've made it through half a mile or so, I find I am enjoying myself. Going even more slowly than usual gives me plenty of opportunity to notice splurges of color both large and small. Down here we must savor what fall foliage we do have, with no comparisons to northern woods. I think bright leaves with dark green in the background are very dramatic looking.

I walk from block to block with half a mind to drop into the greenbelt for a stretch to see what colors might be popping in there. The big drainage field where people often bring their dogs for a game of fetch is deserted. One quick slope down and I'm surrounded by woods. Now I'm on trails I've only travelled on my mountain bike. Ever since the rains began a few weeks ago, the trails have remained saturated, the rocks absolutely treacherous. No biking possible: the mud instantly clogs all the knobby parts of your tires and you have no grip on anything. Besides, it wrecks the trails. My sneakers are quickly weighed down with nearly black, sticky clay.

If the streets were empty, the woods are positively lifeless. I'm a city girl as you know, and there are only two factors that keep me from running as fast as I can back to civilization: first, it's so cold I'm not likely to encounter a rattlesnake - even though this is exactly the trail on which I saw one summer before last. Second, I think it is too cold and too early in the day for zombies - even though I know for a fact that they are in here somewhere.

Astonished to have survived half a mile of mortal danger at every step, I've never been so grateful to emerge from the woods. I get busy scraping some of the gunk off the bottoms of my shoes and resume my walk, immediately immersing myself in colors.

Sometimes I'll see a flare of red and orange that gives the impression that the woods are on fire. It's a lovely thought, when it is merely an impression and not a reality. By this point in the walk it is drizzling heavily, but I'm having a great time. Against all odds, my feet are dry and very warm; and when my feet are warm I am comfortable.

Besides, I've reached the neighborhood's "Wildflower Preserve," a plot of land on the edge of the 'hood that someone somehow convinced the Homeowners' Association to purchase a few years before we moved here. Some of the charmers among my neighbors gnash their teeth at such a waste of money, going so far as to point out that it would have been quite handy to have a gas station here instead. I am always relieved that they didn't show up for the vote.

In any event, this is the farthest point in my walk, a good halfway spot. As I roam around looking for color, the drizzle tries hard to become real rain. My glasses are wet and my sweatpants are streaked with mud.

During the last mile I encounter some signs of life emerging from the houses. A few cars rush by, a few well-wrapped dog walkers accompany their canines on a potty run. My mind turns to one of the great pleasures of taking a walk on a day like this: the prospect of a long hot soak in a great big bathtub with an Elizabeth George mystery and a cold beer.

Can that be my pace quickening?

Here's the Thing

Here's the thing about the weather right now: I can't keep up. We spend the months between July and October locked in to a pattern of hot, hot, hot, sun, sun, sun, hot, hot, hot. We become accustomed to a simple, if occasionally tedious, reality. Then the winds start to shuffle stuff around, and we can hardly figure out what to wear when we head out the door.

We've had ninety degrees this week, we've had thirty degrees this week. I've gone to work in sandals, I've gone in my warmest socks and boots. Open windows have let warm breezes run through the house, this morning my car is coated with ice. Can you blame me for feeling a bit discombobulated? I am too old for this kind of thing.

It's Friday already, it's late November already. The streets are filling with confetti-colored leaves, making it look as though color is draining out of the world from the treetops down. Damp black pavement is carpeted in yellow, orange, and wine-red. It's true we don't have the New England foliage I grew up with, but we have our own version; and it tends to be a gradual progression, with lots of green giving way to vivid hues and burnished, bronzed expanses. At the moment, we're still taking on color.

Out the back door this morning. Cold. Wet. Wind.

When the north wind sends crisp oak leaves scuttling loudly down the street, you know the season has changed for real. The markets are overflowing with excellent apples from both coasts, baking pumpkins, winter squash. Television has been an odd admixture of Thanksgiving menus and the fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. I'm not sure how to feel.

I've been thinking about what makes autumn so unbearable - aside from the wretched holidays and their obligatory disappointments - and one thing I keep coming back to is that soon the world will be monochromatic. Bare trees, dead lawns, gardens full of empty stalks. That weird milky sun that gives you a headache as you drive along. Down here in central Texas we won't even have the splendid respite of snowstorms to compensate, with that wonderful hush you experience walking out to a white world. No color, no snow days, nothing but cold feet and hands, and the desperate urge to stay home by the fire all day.

Just yesterday morning, letting Travis out, I stepped out onto the patio as the coffeemaker was grinding up the beans. When I closed the door behind me, the whirr of the grinder was replaced seamlessly by the whirr of crickets, and I thought about how the insects' sounds will be gone soon too. Tomorrow morning the world will be silent.

Maybe I'm jumping too far ahead. We still have plenty of autumn going on. It's just ironic that such loveliness summons such bleak anticipations.

Last night it was seventy degrees at bedtime; today it's under forty degrees and rainy, with similar atmospheric misery expected all weekend. There's nothing like cold rain to drive me to unpleasant indoor chores that have been put on hold since last March. I'd rather dust bookcases than go out in this.

One of the other unbearables about autumn is its manner of reminding us just how quickly time goes flying by. This is probably the oldest whine in the history of humanity, but it's mine just the same. Last week I met someone's brand-new baby, and waxed nostalgic - not for the days when my own two were little, but for the days of tiny grandchildren! Nobody warned me that might happen.

I may be a slightly unruly and irreverent grandmother, but the five grands can count on at least two things when they come to our house: we'll all walk over to the closest playground at some point, and at some point there'll be a Nerf gun battle in the house. I'll find Nerf bullets in every nook, cranny, and houseplant for months. It's always a big day for Travis.

Travis making sure the herd stays together

And that no one crosses until I say it's OK

Here's the thing: the kid in the red shirt is #1 Grandson, and he is now officially as tall as I am. It's true that I am on the short side of normal and he's on the tall side, but still. No more little babies in this picture. Just the other day I teased him - he can take a teasing with a dimple in his cheek - that he'd better tell his kids good things about me. He said he would.

It all goes by too fast, but like a kid at the very top of his swing, up where your feet fly past the treetops and into the clear blue sky, there's no stopping it. We're going.

Good-bye, Summer?

I'm finishing up this post at mid-day on a November Sunday. Austin's Formula One race seethes and screeches excitedly from the television. I'm having a hard time telling a coherent tale of the beginning of autumn.

At nine on this past Tuesday morning, this was the temperature outside the kitchen door. That's as warm was it was expected to be until Thursday. Two days of arctic conditions! My hands immediately became cold and stubborn. Those endless polar nights would bring our first freezes of the season. I rifled through the coat closet in search of my gloves.

So I thought it would be comforting to just ramble on about the last of our summer colors.

Crown of Thorns (Euphorbia milii)

Bronze fennel for the caterpillars to eat

Chinese fringe plant (Loropetalum chinensis)

Growing up in New England, it seemed the seasons moved slowly into one another, a gentle segue. At the beach in late August, a string of oppressively humid, motionless days would usher in a huge thunderstorm that we'd watch from the picture window in our parents' bedroom. Half thrilled, half terrified, we'd count the seconds between light flash and ka-boom. Did we ever really believe it was angels bowling?

The next day would be clear and cool, the sand coated with a sticky layer of itself. Take a step to break in, feel the soft white sand underneath, and bend to pick up trapezoids of the broken damp layer. Who could pick up the biggest piece without breaking? Thinking of memories like this remind me that I was a child once, with a child's way of dallying over the slightest amazement in a world filled with amazements. No wonder it can be so trying to take people like that for a walk: every single thing encountered merits exploration.

Back in town right after Labor Day, we might have had a strand of warm days, but you'd still start the day in a sweatshirt. Afternoons might have stretched into an Indian summer, days of brilliant sunshine and trees in what Anne Sexton called "sourball colors." (Can you believe that the spell checker doesn't know what a sourball is?) The cold, it seemed, came gradually: one morning you needed a sweater. You needed a sweater for a few weeks. Then you needed a jacket. A couple of weeks later your warmest coat and mittens. You wouldn't need leggings (!) for the bare-leg-freezing walk to school until January.

Gradual transition, that's what I'm talking about.

But seasons don't behave that way here in central Texas. You can walk into a building for class quite scantily clad, with a bead of sweat running down your back, and emerge ninety minutes later to find it's thirty degrees colder with a humorless north wind. That's why, on a day when frost has been predicted, it's good to walk around and memorize all the colors that will soon be gone.

The butterflies and bees have been insanely busy this week. Not that they spend a whole lot of time "laying up with the dry cows," as Floyd would say. The bees create a mild electric buzz in the air around all the salvia, seeming to prefer it above all else just now. At #1 Grandson's Little League game yesterday, a honeybee searched me over and over for something promising to drink.

The colors of autumn are orange and yellow, bronze, and the shadowy reds dark as dried blood. Around the 'hood, fall flowers and the transitional trees - half green, half red - make their ways in fits and starts toward the end of this long hot season.

A handful of little mums

Mutabilis roses

Stopping by en route to a milder winter

The best part of autumn and winter, as far as I'm concerned, is the return of the screech owl to her box in the live oak on the corner. She came back weeks later this year than last, and during that final weekend of waiting I was convinced she wouldn't be back at all. Had it been her body I'd seen that afternoon beside the gravel path in the woods?  The thought of her absence was like the traumatic loss of something that had never really been mine. Neighbors told us they'd heard the screech owls trilling to one another in the evenings, but we hadn't heard or seen a thing.

Then on the first cool Monday morning of the season, there she was. Now autumn could begin.

I should take full responsibility for the rough nature of this post, but I won't. Here I am trying to tell a tale of autumn. We have leaves turning color and new flowers on the salvia. We enjoyed a fire in the fireplace several mornings this week. Three days ago my basil plants refused to take another step toward winter: I pulled their slimy frozen and defrosted bodies gently from the square-foot garden and sent them to the world of yard waste.

Here I was trying to make a case that in Texas seasons change as if shot from a gun: BAM! That abrupt. I got you feeling sorry for my poor stiff cold hands. Is it any wonder this post is all jagged? I am simply not writer enough to weave a smooth narrative with conditions like I face around here. A moment ago I stepped out the back door with my phone to take a picture of what I'm up against, just trying to tell a tale of autumn:

Obviously, no matter how faithfully I try to report on its arrival, autumn tells its own tale.

"Autumn"

Down here the long summer ends at midnight.
A dark wind flies down fast, on an impulse,
unplanned for and ill thought out. It just comes.

At first you think you are dreaming. If the trees,
shaken from top to bottom, fear it,
you cannot tell. They wake you, whispering
familiar words in a familiar voice.

Then you are aware of other undoings: dead branches,
set free, comb the lawn and come to rest, empty,
against a corner of the shed. The shed door opens
and shuts, opens and shuts.

Pulled up without warning from the long corridor,
the ceiling made of sand, the wingless flight,
leaving the party where you spoke easily to the dead,
you feel for some time you must still be dreaming.

The bed surprises you, it has grown so cold.
What does this darkness mean, blown and blowing?
Who has pulled the blanket of summer off?
The clock's blue digits claim it is tomorrow.

Only hours later will events be revealed:
when morning comes it is the light of autumn,
a flawless sky and old leaves coming down.

Walking out, there is the shock of sun and cold.
The air seems too sharp to breathe.

The cats, tucked under and wise, watch you
from rail and rooftop. They are relieved:
the rain is gone, the long fever broken.

It is as though your life has been removed,
and almost replaced with something else.

Low in the west not, the moon remembers.
It is pale but still there, unmistakable.

And now on every leaning stalk and flower,
a fuss of wings, a clamor of hunger.
They know the time of feeding must be short:
Get it now, get it now, they say.

It is no good, this looking to the past.
Let the old photographs stick to themselves.
Let the yellowed envelopes yellow,
let them crumble. Let the words fade.
Let the old sentiments live out their lives
untouched, secure in what they were,
holy as ever.

Looking back,
you will only see small young faces caught
in the light of joy and bravado.
What did they know?
Looking back,
you will only see the slender forms of young
lovers, not who they are now. Not even
who they were then.

Looking back, you will only find sad
fierce letters, postmarking loss
from Camden, Hartford, and Sagamore:
where are you, where are you? Even then
you were alone, and knew it. Looking back,
you must see how much of love is failure.

This is autumn: live with it.
Recognize that this sharp light, this blue
against yellow, this last foolish leaf about to fall,
this sudden slap of cold against your face:
this is what there is now.

Lucy and Ethel Erect A Greenhouse

My friend Mary makes fastidious use of her windshield shade - you know those things that unfold to keep your dashboard from melting in the sun when you can't find a tree to park under? When I'm with her, being the super-consciencious guest I am, I always try to be first with the chore of folding it up whenever we get in the car. Sorry to have to say that I may be a helpful houseguest, but my manual skills are roughly on a par with a cow learning to crochet. You wouldn't think folding a windshield shade correctly could be almost impossible, but it is for me.

Just fold it like a taco, says Mary.

I don't know about where you live, but where I live tacos do not fold into a multi-layered circle. The stupid spring-loaded window shade contorts itself according to some perverse inner vision - the same one road maps follow - and no matter how hard I try, I simply cannot make a circle out of the thing. The best I can do is render it small enough to cram into the door pocket beside my seat and hope Mary won't notice.

Here in Austin it's the first week in November, blissfully damp, with temperatures in the 70's. Every yard in the neighborhood is positively lush; wildflowers flame yellow alongside the road; the sidewalk garden is alive with butterflies. Native grasses flow in the breeze like long hair in a convertible, and in nearly the same range of colors: yellow, brown, red. Because we've had so much rain, the view from MoPac south of the river really does look like an enchanted broccoli forest. It's a lovely autumn.

But do not allow yourself to be lulled into complacency by this explosion of colorful flora. Any day now we can expect our first - and perhaps last - freeze of the season.

What does this mean? It means it's time to erect the little pop-up greenhouse I bought last year to shelter a few plants through the coldest nights. It has spent the warm months folded up like a giant version of Mary's windshield screen, wrapped in muslin and twine and propped against some shelves in the garage. Floyd offered to carry it out to the back patio this morning, but I insisted I would have no problem doing that. He did it anyway. There's just no bossing him around.

In possession of a couple of empty hours to use up before driving into town for a haircut (my students have an exam today and my TA's can handle that), I thought I would pop the little thing open and get started on my "Raise the Roofbeam" enactment. A collection of strong, flexible poles form the ribs that give the greenhouse its adorable spaceship shape. All you need to do is insert one end of each pole into a strong sling at the top, secure it with velcro to the wall, and nestle it snugly into a strong sling at the base. All the while trying not to curse your homeowners' association for their bias against real greenhouses.

I'm really glad you weren't here to watch. Or listen. I was, however, tempted to publish this post in hourly installments throughout the day. That way, one of my three loyal fans would notice when I came up missing and call Floyd to come and untangle me.

Now that doesn't look too scary, does it?

There must be a greenhouse in here somewhere.

Umm...

Aha! This must be the top.

You can see what one winter's sun can do to dark green canvas-like material around here. Oh, well, the greenhouse isn't here to look pretty. It has a shade cover for the top, as you'll see; and I'm thinking of draping shade cloth down the back of all the plant shelves as I maneuver them into place inside. Our patio is 100% sun all afternoon, and even the cactus get sunburned.

Just as I'd sprung the mashed up layers into one giant circle, the clearing sky went cloudy again and it started looking like rain might be on the way. Pushing and pulling the half-unfolded thing through the kitchen door wasn't the first time I thought about Lucy and Ethel today, and it certainly wasn't the last. I could practically hear canned laughter in the background.

The little greenhouse lay more or less flat on the kitchen floor for several hours. All I could do was wait for clear skies, hope that nothing really scary took up residence in its folded-up parts during the months it spent in the garage, and think about my strategy for Take Two. Meanwhile, I went to get my hair cut and stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home for salad stuff and a chunk of Creamy Toscano. Fortification was clearly going to be needed. It was all I could do to stick with water when any sensible adult would have gone for a much stronger beverage.

Lunch out of the way, the moment of truth could be postponed no longer. I screwed my courage to the wall, whatever that means, and stepped onto the patio, feeling inordinately proud of myself for remembering not to assemble the greenhouse in the comfort of my kitchen.

Insert pole in top; secure with velcro; insert in bottom. Piece of cake.

Umm...

After several failed attempts to insert the first pole (it takes a great deal of stretching all that heavy plastic!), I sought directions online and saw that the nice man assembling a greenhouse like mine appeared to be working on the inside. Hmm. Being as gifted as I am in the visual-spatial department, it took several trips to the computer to visualize and then mimic his position; but at last the first pole was placed.

As promised by the manufacturer, one person can certainly assemble this puppy. (Just as long as the person is able to employ two hands, two arms, two legs, two feet, and one head to hold things up while all those appendages push, pull, and do whatever's necessary to maneuver the poles into place. The more I think about it, the gladder I feel that you weren't there. I kept thinking I was going to inflict a through-and-through injury to my digestive parts with one of those tautly sprung poles.)

The next three or four poles were no walk on the beach, I'm telling you; but eventually the little greenhouse was almost ready for the standing position I demanded of it. The rest of the poles went into place relatively easily, as long as I started from the top and was careful not to fall off the ladder.

By the time I was done, my poor hands were no longer speaking to me except in very harsh tones, and my back and shoulders were marching right alongside them in protest. Ignoring this attempt at mutiny, I strung little while lights around the interior - yes! Tested them to make sure they work before I hung them! yes! - and managed to employ those annoying little zip-ties with reasonable efficiency. (I consider threading them correctly on first attempt approximately 75% of the time to be reasonably efficient.)

As you know from having read my previous greenhouse-related post, I've resolved this year to leave room for a reasonably comfortable chair. There's nothing like relaxing in a hyper-oxygenated bubble, surrounded by blooming things and twinkly little lights, a space heater oscillating to and fro at your feet and a cold drink by your side to make a winter evening something to savor.

It almost makes me look forward to January.