Life on a family farm
in the wilds of
Upstate New York
Thursday, October 17, 2013
April in Autumn
Just stepped outside for the second walking of the potato-bombing-floor-piddler. Found a wonder. First walkies involved dark, army-drab, lumbering clouds obscuring what should have been an incipient sunrise. It was drizzling. One of those hunch your shoulders and get on with it moments. Now, the sun is up. The air is warm and moist and fragrant, redolent with earth, leaves, and green things....we still have not had a killing frost. Sweet! And the birds! Birds everywhere. Red-winged blackbirds hurrying urgently north or west, probably in hot pursuit of corn as yet unharvested. Starlings by the hundred hurtling toward a dead elm, the better to roost and chatter. Jays, gold finches, doves and crows. Earnest little downy woodpeckers chipping away at seed pods and twigs. A robin chuck-chuck-chucking from the highest branch of the honey locust. Yellow rumped warblers simply everywhere. Fighting, flighting, flourishing their tail patches. And lots and lots and lots of everything else you could imagine. The whole valley is seething with birds, hustling, bustling, chipping, cheeping and chortling. Like money in the bank that the government can't spend. I love it.
5 comments:
shush! Don't mention killing frost! Mother Nature might remember that she forgot! And I'd really like to get a pumpkin this year....
Beautiful words and pictures; I'm caught between hoping the warm-ish weather continues, and the knowledge that it can't ... not indefinitely.
There you go again.
Going Frostian, Twainian and Will Rogerian on us.
My writing needs brushing up. I'd milk 2 dozen cows if It'd help me write like this.
One day last week the rains came and then washed away and then the sun came out and through out everything it felt like spring...I do understand.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
Ruth, still none here and I am grateful. Just cold enough for the apples to start to taste good.
Rev. Paul, just taking each day as it comes and grateful for all of them.
Cathy, thanks...and you write spectacularly well...
Linda, you have sure had some rough weather out your way.
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