This is my morning view. I sit on the Adirondack chair that N and I built, Ada keeps watch for Evil Squirrels, and I drink my coffee. In the distance, you can see the pink cosmos, blooming near the back fence. I planted them far too late, but they've managed to bloom like crazy starting in late September.
The leaves are just starting to come down. I have no trees in my yard, so I only get a few leaves from the neighbors' trees. Since I'm a gardener, I'd actually like to have more leaves than that, to cover my beds and fill my compost pile. This year, I plan to "liberate" many paper bags of leaves that neighbors have left to be picked up be the city, and shred them with my mower. Yesterday, in fact, I found three bags of pine needles, which will be a great mulch for the front garden beds.
When I get back from Denver, I think it may have turned to cold to keep spending my early mornings outside. But that's all right, because I'll be back in just four or five months. Having relatives in Minnesota, with its six months of winter, makes me extra appreciative of the comparatively balmy seasons here.
4 comments:
I love reading about your experience of life as an adult in Maryland.I always find it so strange that my parents lived there, I grew up there, and yet we left when I was a certain age and aside from a fleeting visit back in my teens, I never went back. But my memories of the seasons and weather remain strong from those times. I like to imagine your experience might have been what I would have experienced in an alternate universe.
Except I find 6C already really stinking cold to be outside. :)
In spite of having the oak tree cut down earlier in the year we are still getting plenty of leaves to turn into leafmould. We've also put a pile of leaves in a sheltered corner so that any wandering hedgehogs might decide to hibernate there when the weather drops colder - our blackbirds though like to search through the pile in search of insects - still, we persevere in scraping the pile of leaves back together.
Well you know I am the antithesis of the do-it-yourself person. I loved spring and fall in Maryland too. Especially growing up in Connecticut where, like Minnesota, winter is far too long and where spring is mostly wet, damp and grey with muck and mud from melting snow. But I will NEVER regret moving to a place where I do not have to rake up leaves! (Or mow a lawn). (Or shovel snow).
I miss Ada so much!
I like the "Evil Squirrels" part. ;)
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