The return of children to school in late August always sneaks up on me. It’s still summer, vegetable gardens are at peak production, swimming pools are open and filled with cavorting water babies of all ages. Soon thereafter, however, Mother Nature usually sends Northeast Ohio a save-the-date sample of autumn weather. This year, it arrived last weekend. Sweaters, jeans and ankle boots were pulled out after months of wearing T-shirts, skirts and sandals.
Fall in my part of the world is a treasure. Forests filled with trees of multihued leaves rival any found in New England. The humidity, which is never that bad here, evaporates altogether leaving cerulean skies decorated with pretty clouds unique, in my observations, to the Great Lakes region.
And yet, unlike the other season of dramatic change, spring, there is a poignancy to fall. Summer flora is winding down and though it will be many weeks before the last garden bloom turns brown and gifts its seeds to the ground for the coming year, some are already wrapping up their colorful shows. Crickets chirp ever longer each day and spiders have gone berserk making webs like Amish barn builders in competition.
The term spring cleaning comes from an era when homes were heated with wood and coal, fuel that left ash and soot throughout a home. When the cold of winter receded for the warm, wet days of spring, it was time to take down curtains and wash them along with bedding, rugs, windows, floors, walls and all the contents found under a roof.
Springtime fills me with an urgency to go outside and garden. It is fall, in which I make way for everything that must come inside, that has me sorting and editing my possessions. Garages need cleaned out to make space for outdoor furniture. Potted plants, including some flowers, such as begonias, need interior real estate near sun-filled windows. Closets are culled of items outgrown, worn out or plainly no longer in style (though that last one becomes less of a concern with time and age).
One of my favorite things to haul inside is the produce I’ve grown, gotten in my CSA share or purchased at a farmer’s market. I spend several weekends putting up the sweet tastes of summer while imagining the joy it will bring when served on future cold and snowy nights.
Jars of peaches that I canned last year, the succulent syrup sweetened with local honey, still fill an entire shelf in my cellar. I’m glad of this because I’m not sure when I’d have time to put up a new bushel given all else I need to process. This has been a banner year for just about everything in the garden, both flower and vegetable.
Across the United States, people have raved about 2024’s hydrangea blooms and mine are no exception. Two tree-like hydrangeas have for years provided the most delightful privacy scrim when I sit on my front porch. Bouquets of their flowers have filled vases for several weeks, and I’ve also given many to friends. But you could never tell looking at them as they remain laden with white blossoms the shape of grape clusters. In the backyard, round hydrangea bushes produced the first flowers since 2020 — round, multicolored blossoms.
The past several years, I planted several basil plants, mostly Genovese, only to have them fizzle by mid July no matter how much I watered them. Remembering that, I only bought three plants this year, which was a good call because they each grew a yard high, nearly as wide, with leaf-covered branches. A batch of pesto requires two tightly packed cups of basil leaves. I’ve put up two batches and easily have enough basil left for three or more batches.
Established on a section of one basil plant is an intricate funnel web and its arachnid weaver, a member of the Agelenidae family. Unlike many people, spiders don’t bother me. Quite the opposite — I admire their handiwork and industry in hunting and devouring pesky arthropods, i.e., insects like Japanese beetles.
Last Sunday, I put on a new-to-me album, “Another Dimension” by pianist Charles Bell and the Contemporary Jazz Quartet (1963), and then spent the better part of the afternoon chopping tomatoes, onions, peppers (hot and mild), cilantro and garlic. I squeezed the juice of several limes, mixed it all together with freshly ground Himalayan salt and when I had finished, salsa filled an 8-quart pot.
I took one of several containers of my salsa fresca straight away to my next-door neighbors. They ate half of it with chips and used the other half to make meat loaf, a slice of which they gave me the next day when returning my container.
And I think to myself, whatever the season, life in my Akron home is good.
This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, September 15, 2024.
Whoopsie Piggle 