Torsgad october 6, 2022

binaakwii-giizis   Falling Leaves Moon

Here in The Middle of Nowhere

    And what a nice week it’s been, eh. The colors of the trees have been florescent; these very last days the paper birch in the yard have dropped all their leaves, leaving the green ash, hybrid cottonwood, crab apple, bur oak, sugar maple, red maple and Ginnala Maple to dominate our senses; and let fade into the background, the monotone blue spruce, black hills spruce, and white spruce until the first snowfall. Will I be as content with the outlines of the first snowfall? We’ll see.

Contrasts in the background

 

    Thursday night temperatures are forecast to fall to 23 degrees -- and thus, I predict, so shall all the leaves left on the trees, fall. I’m glad I’ve mulched the leaves that have fallen so far even as I look back from where I’ve been to see them begin to blanket the area again; I couldn’t be so cheerful if I had to rake them all by hand.

    Knowing it would soon turn colder, I shook the apple tree of the apples at its very top that we couldn't pick by hand; this 25+ year old tree that I had given up on ever producing. It had ten apples on it last year that surprised me -- and this year, presumably because of all the weeks of rain we got in May (then almost nothing for weeks) it shocked me as it started 'showing' fruit in such numbers I had never seen.

 

    I had planted it in another area of the yard those many years ago, then transplanted it to where it is now when the top graft began to die off. Jackie worked with it using various incantations and her green thumb that she's used successfully on other of the trees, and it came around with renewed vitality. Hmmm, that reminds me, I haven't had my apple a day ...

    As the geese gather by the thousands on the neighboring fields; the snows and blues, the Canadian honkers, the swans, the ducks, and sand hill cranes sweep by overhead their frenzied calls deafening, even a mile away, I can’t but love the north land and where we live --  in The Middle of Nowhere!