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| Mrs. 'Boro: Autumn shows up and goes right inside |
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By: JEANNE BRAGG, Post Columnist
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Posted: Sunday, September 27, 2009 7:32 am
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I got in the mood to bring autumn into my house last weekend.
I usually don’t remember to put up fall-like decorations until just before Halloween, and by then I figure Christmas is coming so there’s no need to get out the scarecrows or bats. So I head straight for the pumpkins and turkeys about Nov. 15 and take them down right after Thanksgiving.
I do like to decorate a little for Thanksgiving because it is my favorite holiday being all about family (and food, of course).
But for some reason this year, maybe the unseasonably cool weather, I hung up my fall wreath, put pumpkins at the front door and set out the ceramic pumpkins and turkeys I bought about 10 years ago at the Peddler.
I have tired of the spindly annuals on the side porch and bought some beautiful chrysanthemums at the Farmers Market.
Those mums put me immediately in the mood to clean up the side porch – very unusual – so I knew I had to strike while the iron was hot because I hate changing out seasons. But it went rather efficiently this week.
First I got out that big paper sack for yard waste, got a plastic garbage bag to catch soil from the plants I was repotting (and to catch random waste around the yard, plant tags, plastic pots, etc), put my clippers and my hand trowel in a waist apron and headed out to work.
I also gathered up a shovel, a saw and a huge butcher knife.
Before I made it out of the door, my friend Silvia called and I asked her how to cook a big butternut squash I had bought at the Market.
Fueled by her suggestions, I cut the squash in quarters (I could have used the saw to do that instead of a knife – man, those things are hard to cut), put it in the oven at 350 degrees and went out to work.
The hummingbirds have been very playful this year, and as Silvia and I talked, a ruby-throated one stayed perched on a branch near my feeder for what I know was a good minute and a half. Silvia said she heard it was going to be a cold winter because the hummingbirds have been eating so much.
I wondered if the roly-poly bugs were multiplying because of a bad winter coming, too, but read on the Internet that they thrive in high moisture conditions. There are more of them than I have ever seen this year, obviously due to all the rain.
To my surprise and delight, the “clean out the weeds” fairy (Tommy) preceded me into the garden, digging some of that blue-flowering weed out of my herb garden. It made my tasks much easier.
I threw away the withering tomato vines and most of summer’s spent annuals, but did repot two sprengheri ferns (using the butcher’s knife to cut them out of the soil). Hopefully they’ll winter over. Those things are hard to find in the spring, and expensive if you can find them.
I replaced the annual urns with the mums (doing it on a table is the easiest way), put the “used” dirt in the compost pile, took the yard clippings to the street and hosed it all down.
And, gosh, it felt good. The sun came out just as I finished, and the squash tasted so good I could have eaten the whole thing. After peeling off the skin and cutting it into cubes, I threw it in a pot with sauteed onions and an apple, chicken broth and some cream heated with rosemary, and gosh, it was delicious.
I should have worked the back porch while I was on a roll, but it will still be there. I don’t expect that yard fairy to surprise me twice, but who knows?
“Hope Springs Eternal,” as Daddy used to say.
‘Til next week. |
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