The Season of Last Things

This is the season of last things, and how poignant they are in their shapes and colors, in every fiber of their joyous and unfettered being.

The last antique roses are blooming in our garden, and the last ripening tomatoes cling to their vines in the veggie patch. The last wild grapes of the season dangle in village hedgerows, soon to be picked by frugal villagers and turned into jelly and wine. Scarlet Virginia creepers wrap old wooden fences in the village, and the last crimson berries sway on our hawthorn, most of them already carried off by birds and squirrels. Maple, oak and beech leaves flutter through the air like birds, coming to rest on veranda railings and the chilly dark earth below in the garden.

I love autumn, but this season always takes some getting used to, and I am working on it again this time around. There have been many farewells to departing (or hibernating) wild kin in the last week or two, and I have tried to remember to say thanks to the myriad entities who enriched our lives this year and are now passing away. Bees, bumbles, dragonflies and cicadas - wherever they alight in their journey, and whoever or whatever they come to be the next time around, may they all be well and happy.

At first light, local hedgerows wear strands of spider silk, shimmering and strung with pearls of dew. I remember an October day a few years ago when a neighbor rang my doorbell a few minutes after sunrise, wide-eyed, breathless and ecstatic. While walking her dogs in a nearby field, she had discovered a vast orb weaver's web, several feet wide and beaded with tiny drops of condensation from one end to the other.  I just had to come out and see it, had to capture it for her with the Pentax and my macro lens.

 

My friend has health issues now, and she resides in an assisted living community in the village. I think of her whenever I pass the cedar hedge where we once stood shivering in the early light, entranced by a weaving spider's exquisite creation. We were as happy that cold morning as two hoary old clams can ever be.