No rain for over three months, and we can be glad this isn’t the growing season: The fall crops are inclined to idle, grow slow, as dew is enough to keep the spinach alive. But the aphids don’t die, and nor are they washed away.
I go out before daybreak, and the sky is so clear that the satellites, slow-moving buoys, stand out. A launch is no longer a strange sight. A string of them, being towed into Earth’s low orbit, ascend into the eastern sky.
It is still night, and the tremendous noise that must exist is silent. Behind me and above, the whole dark sky is silent, watching the capsules vanish as they deploy. The space “ships” can teach us about Earth at almost the same rate they distract us from Earth.
November does not have the same pressure as spring, because it is on the other side, the far side, of our growing season. But is it not always the growing season? Do we not always need rain?
The oats, planted as the earliest fall cover crop, usually form a thick, green blanket, and then, before too long, the crop is winter-killed by successive frost. The blanket is no longer alive, but much within and below it is. There is vitality in the slow decay; beyond nutrients and organic matter, rodents weave nests with dry grass. They scavenge seeds and hunker down.
And it is here, within their warm, plump bodies, that the food chain won’t be broken. The feral cats, the foxes, the two harrier hawks instead of one, are partially dependent, adapted to my industry — and well-fed for the time being. A farmer, like the gardener, can be forgiven for thinking he is forgiven. We must try to put back at least as much as we’ve taken away.
Roses near the house continue to bloom, and honeybees still gather from here … and all the other things they find still growing. They try the trapdoor and the closed lip of the snapdragons. They visit the stray azalea and a poppy meant for spring, until finally landing on the dandelion. Always the dandelion — yellow, wide and welcoming to the bee.
So, nothing seems off — except my calendar.
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