Tis the season

For all that winter is hurtling towards us like a frozen rocket (and yes I know that autumn doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but, trust me, winter is nipping at its heels like like a coyote on a white tail) this is a fabulous season. The air is so crisp and invigorating that it fair makes your skin tingle. When I have occasion to go outside to hang up laundry or fill the stove with wood, I don't want to come back inside. I think we are filled with the same instincts that set the Canada geese winging down the great flyways and the woodchucks and squirrels fattening up on alfalfa and corn. There is a constant, intense, urge to get something, anything at all, done and done right now. It is surely a restless time of year.

Every Friday it has become my task to drive Becky over to college and wait while she has three classes. You might think that three hours spent sitting in a car might come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishement, but it is nice in fact. I get to read all the papers in peace, and maybe a good book too, and the campus is tranquil and lovely. The girls both attend SUNY Cobleskill, an ag and tech school, which has liberal arts degree programs as well. It also has a renouned horticulture program, with much of the campus landscaped by students. Young maples are just now turning bronze and gold, flowers that are unfamiliar to me flourish in dozens of beds, and wonderful birds rustle in the shrubs.

In fact a small sparrow comes every week to torment me, hopping briskly back and forth along the curb under the front bumper. He is in constant motion and a frustrating puzzle. It is as if he were saying, "Nyah, nyah, bet you can't guess what I am."

He is right, I can't. Is he a chipping sparrow in fall plumage, or perhaps a juvenile? Probably not, although he has a dark russet cap reminiscent of a chipper's summer garb. Savannah sparrow? The notched tail and markings almost fit, but not quite. Something else altogether perhaps? I just don't know. He is always ruffled up as if recently injured and has a few upturned wing feathers that suggest the same. I even took the binoculars along this week to try to get a good look, but he is always on the move. It is really bugging me.

If we ever retire and can afford it, I would like to go to school at SUNY Cobleskill and study some of the horticulture and maybe fisheries and wildlife programs. They are just so darned interesting.