A Visit to the Pumpkin Patch

A neighbor's farm hosts this pumpkin patch every year

Happy Halloween!

Orange is the color of autumn, especially around Halloween.  One of my Dad’s neighbors sells pumpkins from their pumpkin patch.  Here are some photos:

Pumpkins with vintage bicycle

Wagon-load of pumpkins for sale

Another pumpkin display

Page from John Updike's A Child's Calendar

Intimations of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”

“The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.”
–  Wallace Stevens, from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

Flock of blackbirds on the driveway

Sometimes I am in the right place at the right time.  I was coming back to the farm after a trip to town and saw this flock of blackbirds on the driveway.  I was fortunate to have my camera in the front seat beside me, so I was able to take a few photos before they continued on their fall migration.  It was like something out of National Geographic!

I approached the feeding flock in the ditch.

Blackbirds taking wing

The flock rises into the air

Blackbirds, like swirling black snow

 

Little Dyings: The Last of the Fall Foliage

Late fall foliage along Hwy 52 nearing Rochester, MN

Patch of remaining fall color, taken from the airplane window as I departed Minnesota

I arrived too late to enjoy the peak of fall color in Minnesota.  This was a disappointment.  Everyone told me that the brilliance lasted just a short time this year and was gone in a flash.  I can’t seem to time my visits right to catch the gorgeous color.  By the time I arrived, the Minnesota landscape was mostly shades of brown and green.

Late October
by Maya Angelou

Carefully
the leaves of autumn
sprinkle down the tinny
sound of little dyings
and skies sated
of ruddy sunsets
of roseate dawns
roil ceaselessly in
cobweb greys and turn
to black
for comfort.

Only leaves
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order simply
to begin
again.

 

 

The Minnesota Landscape in October

The area around Minneapolis-St. Paul from the airplane window -- flat!

Every time I return to Minnesota in the nation’s heartland, I am struck anew by its beauty.  The long flat vistas, the rolling plains, farms and fields are so different from the mountainous Pacific Northwest where I live.

The rural landscape in Minnesota is dotted with these iconic structures:  old barns and silos, small town water towers, and large grain storage elevators.  Here are some photos from my road trips to Alexandria in northern Minnesota and Rochester in southern Minnesota:

Foggy country road along my sister's farm near Alexandria, MN

Foggy morning near I-94 "up north"

Grain storage elevators

I saw more of these elevators than ever before on this trip to Minnesota.

Water tower on the horizon beyond the fields

Old silos -- most are unused because few farmers still raise livestock

Lovely old barn and silos near Belle Plaine, MN

Interesting patchwork colors on this barn and house

More and more old barns, disused, are falling into ruin.

Barn and silo along Hwy 52

Watch out for tractors on the roads! The large, new machinery overlaps several lanes of highway.

Thoreau Thursdays (28): A Harvest of Leaves, or Taking a Virtual Walk in Our Minnesota Woods

“Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed on the earth!  This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year.  The trees are now repaying the earth with interest what they have taken from it.  They are discounting.  They are about to add a leaf’s thickness to the depth of the soil. . . . We are all the richer for their decay. . . . It prepares the virgin mould for future corn-fields and forests, on which the earth fattens.  It keeps our homestead in good heart.”
– Henry David Thoreau, “Harvest”

The maintained trail through our woods

My family’s farm is bordered on the south by a small woods.  When I was young, our dairy herd had free run of the woods and adjoining pasture, and it kept the ground well cleared of brush.  It’s been many years since cows have trod through our woods, and the wilderness is taking over.  The woods are brushy with tangled undergrowth, which makes walking more difficult.

My Dad and brothers do maintain a groomed trail that loops around and through the woods so that we can enjoy our walks there.  The cleared path is quiet and sheltered.  This time of year, the path was blanketed with fallen leaves, mostly brown.  The threadbare trees have their own kind of beauty.

“The woods now going threadbare show us the forest’s inner strength.”
– Allen M. Young, Small Creatures and Ordinary Places

I took this week’s Thoreau quote, not from Walden, but from another of his published writings because it reminded me of my walks through the woods at our Minnesota farm.  I invite you to accompany me on a virtual walk through the woods with these photos:

Stalks of goldenrod

The fall colors have muted to browns and greens

The woods are tangled with new growth and brush.

Looking up into the canopy

Looking down onto the leaf-strewn path

Pine cones amidst the pine needles

Fox squirrel

Stripped bark

My brother's hunting blind

“After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things.”
Wallace Stevens, from “The Plain Sense of Things”

Watercolor sketch of red oak leaves from Glenn's memorial tree

Watercolor sketch of white oak leaves

Another watercolor sketch of white oak, red oak leaves and acorns

Be It Ever So Humble, There’s No Place Like Home

The old farmhouse where I grew up

Farmhouse and barn from the meadow

I have just returned from a trip to my childhood home and farm where I stayed with my 92-year-old Dad who still lives there.  I know that I am among the few 57-year-olds who can still make a statement like that.  I am very aware that each return is one of a finite number of remaining stays in the house of my childhood memories.  Two of my brothers now own the farm land and buildings, and the long-term plan is to eventually tear down the old farmhouse and build a new home on the property.

Sidewalk to the front door

View of the fields from the garden and crab apple tree

Birdhouse near the garden

View out the barn door

The old, square, wood-framed farmhouse is nothing special architecturally or design-wise.  You could definitely call it humble.  On this visit, I made sure to photograph some of its rooms, which have changed little over the decades.

“Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
– John Howard Payne

Living room

Living room window

Dining room (We actually eat in the kitchen -- the "dining" room is our T.V. room)

Farmhouse kitchen

Dad's first-floor bedroom

Little Acorns

“Tall oaks from little acorns grow.”
– D. Everett, The Columbian Orator

Watercolor sketch of acorns

Another watercolor sketch of five acorns

Autumn Leaves

Fallen maple leaves blanketing the ground

“How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
to lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care.
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly,
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.”
– Elsie N. Brady, “Leaves”

Watercolor sketch of fall leaves

Watercolor painting inspired by fall

Another watercolor sketch of autumn leaves

 

Wanton Beauty

Sumac's fire-lit torch

Sumac in October

October
by Lexie Dean Robertson

First days in autumn make me catch my breath
In sheer amaze that I shall see again
The fruitful beauty of the earth in death
Across the painted pageant of the plain:

A lilac dawn comes up and fades to gray,
A thin white scarf of wild birds trails the sky,
The sumac’s fire a torch to light the day,
And pearly rustlings of the frost drift by;

Against the curve of distant hills, the blue
Of smoky mist falls into purple night;
The pale gold sickle of the moon lifts new
To hew a circled radiance of dim light.

How strange it is that autumn days will lend
Such beauty wantonly for death to spend.

Watercolor sketch of colorful sumac leaves

Watercolor sketch of sumac leaves

Thoreau Thursdays (27): The View from the Front Door

“There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.  I love a broad margin to my life.  Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.  I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been.  They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The view from my front door

I envy the woodsy view from Thoreau’s front doorway.  I am not enamored of the view from my own front door, looking out on our scraggly lawn and garden to a residential urban street of closely standing houses.  Even our view of the sky is made imperfect by telephone and cable wires.  Our bushes and trees on the borders of our lot are unkempt and wild, but they provide some measure of privacy even in the city.  So thankfully our windows, at least, are free of curtains.

When my sister visited recently, she turned a chair around from facing into the dining room to instead face out the window.  This was her spot to sit while sipping her morning cup of coffee.  This simple action made me realize how easy it would be to be more aware of the outdoors.  How many days have I spent inside, going about my life, without noticing the sunrises and sunsets or clouds passing by!

Thoreau’s quote reminds me to invite revery and contemplation into my days.  I am ashamed at how rarely I spend time in our yard.  I like the idea of using our yard as an outdoor living space, an extension of our house.  I will have to spend the winter dreaming up ways to make this a reality by next summer.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
– John Lubbock, The Use of Life

“Living artfully, therefore, might require something as simple as pausing.”
– Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive.  The great opportunity is where you are.  Do not despise your own place and hour.  Every place is under the stars, every place is the centre of the world.  Stand in your dooryard and you have eight thousand miles of solid ground beneath you, and all the sidereal splendors overhead.”
– John Burroughs, Leaf and Tendril: The Complete Writings of John Burroughs