just SIT

I shuffled with labored gait onto the garden pathway with a very heavy heart. “I haven’t  been able to do ANYTHING in the garden,” I lamented. THIS due to an ongoing struggle with foot problems that has left me hobbling around in a walking cast. By the time the most necessary of daily tasks are complete, I am so heavy with fatigue from dragging the lame limb everywhere I go that I have little energy left to limp out to the garden. This particular evening, however, I was determined to enjoy an autumn salad before the first frost retires the burgeoning bed of lettuce.

“But it’s not all about WORK!!!” came the instant reply in my head. “It’s about the SPACE, and the BEAUTY. Come out here when the sun is shining, and just SIT and ENJOY the space, the SPIRIT of what you’ve created!” I had to admit that I’d never ventured out to the garden just to SIT. I’ve generally got a zillion things I aim to accomplish - way more than I can count on my own allotment of fingers and toes. In fact, I’m known to take LISTS to the garden, something that probably ought to be outlawed and relegated to the “way too busy to enjoy the process” category.

“Okay. I’ll SIT,” I replied, and determined to do just that. The following day I  shuffled my way out to the bench by the crumpled vines I’ve yet to gather, and facing the collards so run-amok with aphids that I doubt I’ll get any to eat myself, and I just SAT for awhile. It took some doing, at first, to slow the busying of my mind so tempted to note the chores left undone, but with a “hush” of myself a time or two I quieted down to hear the last of the crickets chirping in the weeds and the rasping leaves of corn long spent. I gazed at the scattering of zinnias slowly folding for the season, and even lay on my back on a warm patch of clippings dried on the ground. A butterfly fluttered delicate white wings through the bold, azure sky and a yellow spotted beetle dithered about the coiled cone of a morning glory flower. My heart warmed in the softened glow of the mellow autumn sun and I eased myself down to the gentle ebbing there is of everything this time of year. A productive time it was, I have to say, an easing unto rest, and I’ve decided, of course, that I must arrange for more of these times before the winter’s cold arrives, and that I must “just SIT” more often.

Kitty and the Crickets

Huckleberry Huckstable

One of the great pleasures of the waning summer days is listening to the resounding chorus of crickets outside, and yet it’s amazing how many of the musical critters make their way INSIDE to scitter about the house. Perhaps they’re attracted by the unusually loud soloists already in residence in the corners and crevices of our home, playing their tunes loudly enough to keep us awake at night. And yet their bold tunes make them enticing targets of Huckleberry, our sweetest, dearest of feline companions who morphs into lethal  exterminator at even the shyest chirp. “Huck” (for short) is horribly effective at scrampling the winless creatures and slowly, methodically amputating their hindquarters. One morning I collected SEVEN corpses, legs strewn mercilessly about the house. Occasionally I’ll find a cricket still clinging to dear life, pitifully scooting along with one dreary leg and eagerly climbing onto my hand for an escort to ANYWHERE else. But I can’t catch them PRIOR to their hour of need! No, they hop too quickly away, confident in their navigational abilities and proud of their warmer home. But as their songs expire one by one, I am left to collect the dry, lifeless bodies of the little instrumentalists. Efforts to extract any cricket-empathy from sweet kitty are hopeless, and any attempt to rescue the hapless critters are met with a torrid look of disdain. There is some comfort, if that is an accurate word, in the fact that as the season progresses I see their expired bodies outside as well, having found their mates and prepared progeny for the following season. And maybe it helps to view Huckleberry as the valiant mercenary on mission to bring an early end to the crickets’ fruitless search for food and warmth in later life.

No. It doesn’t.

Last of the Summer Tomatoes

There’s something extra special about the last of the summer tomatoes, those stragglers in the later, waning sun that take so much time to ripen. But when they do - Oh, the wait is so worth the while! When I finally pluck that last, reddened fruit from the tangle of collapsing vines and browning leaves and plunge the long-awaited gem into my mouth, the heightened burst of flavor tingles my tongue and dazzles my eyes!

It seems that all of the color and flavor the summer has to offer is concentrated down into the last of the yield loitering on the vine, a final offering of the season reserving its best for the very, very last. I can never wait to return to the house with the long-awaited prize, sampling the deeply reddened jewel there on the spot at the feet of the tangled, expiring plants. And there I rejoice, with the last of the crickets chirping and the birds darting overhead, I rejoice and give an extra special thanks.