Last weekend, under blue sky and 78 degrees, Shawn and I meandered through Menard's garden center, looking for the next application of lawn chemicals.
I showed him the bag I thought was right. "Late summer/fall," it said, "Fertilizer, weed killer and winterizer."
"No," he said, "that's for autumn."
"Yes," I said. "It's autumn."
He looked at me blankly. Apparently he had not noticed the pumpkins and mums surrounding us.
"It's the end of September," I told him. "It will be October before this time next week."
He wiped a glisten of sweat from his brow and deposited a bag of winterizing lawn chemicals into our cart.
The leaves on the trees are still green, but the farmers are starting to harvest the corn. The harvest is such a big deal here, a true marker of the rhythm of life. In fact, people don't even talk about autumn, or fall. It's "The Harvest." Huge combines take down the stalks across miles and miles of golden corn fields.
We don't live in New York anymore. Nor Minnesota.
2 comments:
Ugh! I am with Dad. WHERE did September go? I would like it to come back, please.
I like "The Harvest". It makes me think of golden wheat and colored leaves and tall fields of corn. It is less pretty but more evocative than autumn, and is certainly better than the dud that is 'fall'.
"The Harvest" makes me think of pumpkins and horns of plenty. We went to an apple orchard here and they sold decorative Indian Corn, which brought back memories. My mom had Indian Corn (dried cobs of corn with multi-colored kernels). I never saw it once in NY. "The Harvest" makes me think of bushel baskets filled with apples and potatoes and green beans. But really, it is corn and soybean harvest, and the reality of it is quite grand, in its own way. There is something majestic about seeing huge farm equipment rolling through fields, taking down the corn. Today it's a field of gold, and tomorrow it's a field of short stubble, kind of like one of your brothers after a buzz cut.
Post a Comment