9/11 Postscript

After all of my hand wringing yesterday afternoon, perspective arrived in the evening.  After a patchy, overcast weather all day, a thin stripe of sunshine lit the trees across the pond followed by a pink sky, promising a lovely day today. 

And as I watched the full moon rise after the light faded, my boy mention as he passed me, “I planted a seed in your garden today.”

“You did?”

“Yes.  I planted my nectarine pit in the garden so that it would grow into a tree.”

Never much of a gardener before, I began planting new things each September since 2001 as a way of reminding myself to appreciate where I am now and to invest hope in the coming spring.  The result is a garden that gives me more joy than I ever imagined.  This year’s bulbs sit in a box in the garage waiting to be planted, but it’s good to know something went into the ground on the 11th.  Now, to figure out where he planted it and keep the chipmunks away from it.

Finally, we stumbled on the Science Channel’s Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero and it was gratifying to see something emerging, at last, from the ashes of that day.  No false reality TV drama, just stories and extraordinary images of the new buildings and the memorial and how they are being built.  The series is several hours long and worth every minute.  Thank you, Steven Spielberg.

 

Last Tomato

We have a sweet children’s book called First Tomato, in which a young bunny picks the first ripe tomato and her mother makes her fresh tomato soup.  Only after downloading this photo did I notice that the morning light reveals tiny spiderwebs on the tomato plants, a harbinger of Halloween.  Taken just a few days ago, it already harkens back to seemingly distant, definitely brighter summer days, and I am hoping that the remaining tomatoes will ripen before the frost arrives.  We wait all through June and July and into August for that first tomato, but we never can be sure when we will eat the last, finding sometimes that the days have gotten too short and we have waited too long.

Past watches Present talk on cell phone

It just occurred to me that I have a penchant of taking photos of people talking on cell phones in places where it seems a little incongruous (see Can You Hear Me Now).  The Cemetery is on Main Street in Concord, MA - and the two empty parking spaces just might be the most unusual things in the picture.

The Obligatory Autumn Poem

Falling Colors

It’s November

We have used up

Our allotment of color for this year;

The pigment wells have run dry

Colors are draining from the landscape.

Inexorable fading

Among the maples after a drunken Halloween binge

The reds wither in unpicked apples or

Go into hiding –

Submerged as cranberries or

Crouching in the holly

Yellows and greens

Have more stamina but even they

Are sinking quickly, visibly, into the soil.

On a warm day

The blue sky

Is tepid and wan

And my energy filters

Down through my numb, wiggling toes

Chasing the colors

Flexing in hopes of priming the pump

Even as I succumb to the unfulfilled promise

Of a long winter’s nap.

November 2009

It came from The Old Orchard. . .

Fall 2009 - gnarled apple trees

This apple orchard has been left to its own devices for several and it looks as if the gnarled old trees are emerging from the ground in a Tim Burton-esque quest for revenge.  Who knows what arsenic-laden secrets lay beneath, but they seem to be aching to tell a story no one is ready to hear.

You just have to learn to look in the right direction at the right moment

This photograph was taken while I was standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, where I pulled in with hopes of getting some nice views. Behind me were acres of parking lot lined with tractor trailers and a number of parked RVs – truckers making deliveries and leaf peepers on the move. So, behind me, big box blight, and in front of me, a vison of New England worthy of Raphael’s brush.