And so it goes...

These late September mornings are beyond "cool', downright chilly in fact, and a warm jacket is often needed for morning walks and working in the garden. Sometimes, gloves, scarf and woolly hat are required too, also an umbrella. My hair is very short right now, and I no longer look like a hedgehog when I come inside and take my hat off.

At sunrise, northern skies are cobalt blue with strokes of gold and inky mauve thrown in for good measure. Because of the past summer's unusual heat and humidity, trees in the village are turning slowly this time around, and we are still waiting for breathtaking autumn displays of scarlet and bronze and gold to begin. Everything else is slow this year too, and McIntosh apples and gourds have yet to put in an appearance in local markets. I dream of apples right from the orchard and freshly pressed cider.

The morning air is rich with the fragrance of fallen crabapples and walnuts. In my garden, a few heirloom tomatoes are still ripening and the herbs are going to seed, but the kale continues to deliver profusions of curly green leaves. Nearby, the roses offer what may be the last magnificent blooms of the season, although (hopeful creatures that they are) they continue to bring forth delicate pink buds. Most of the buds will not make it to full blooming before the first frost, but the roses are budding anyway, something that always gives me pause for thought. The Autumn Joy sedum in the corner is moving from silvery green to rose and thence to vibrant burgundy, and it wears a blissed out throng of nectar gathering insects, bees, bumbles, hoverflies and potter wasps.

I ramble the garden watching the slow early movements of awakening bumble bees, and I know with a touch of sadness that one of these mornings we will awaken to frost, and there will be no little sisters doing their buzzing nectar dance in the garden behind the small blue house in the village. The merry sisterhood who graced our garden all summer long will have passed away and returned to the earth. Their queen will spend the winter resting underground and mother a new community in the spring.

I shall miss my little sisters, and as I move from plant to plant this morning, I bend and thank them, each and every one.