Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

We were pleasantly surprised to find fresh local plums at the farmer's market this morning. The farmer told us that they'd been surprised too: this is a tree that wasn't expected to bear for another year or two, and a couple of days ago they saw the ripe fruit. These are nice reddish-purple round plums, yellow inside; they are in a bowl on the counter, and I am checking them a couple of times a day for ripeness, and moving them to the refrigerator as appropriate. I ate one of the just-ripened ones at about 4 o'clock; it hadn't been ripe at 10:45. The frequent checking is a precaution, after I put the big Italian prunes we bought last week (which were also a surprise, and thought the last of the season) in a paper bag and left them on the counter, and they went from under- to overripe annoyingly fast, in a paper bag on the counter.

Also, the bakery with the really good baguettes, which was missing last week, was back today.

So, I don't know what if any of this is anomalous. Yes, Seattle just set a record for most rain during September (dataset goes to 1945, there is no official weather station in Bellevue), in what struck me as a wet but not exceptional month.

What's catching my attention is that autumn seems both late and very drawn out. Most of the trees are still green, though there are some gorgeous trees covered entirely in bright red leaves a couple of blocks south, which I was looking at while I exercised today), but I started seeing bits of yellow and orange on healthy trees in mid-August. Trees which still have those leaves, this isn't like the old sugar maple in Inwood Hill Park that always turned color early and dropped its leaves early.

I had fresh local nectarine in my yogurt yesterday morning, and fresh local raspberries this morning. Yes, the vendor at the farmers' market told me this was the last week for berries, but another farmer (not there this past Saturday) had told me the same two weeks earlier. We were also told that there would probably be no nectarines next week, but plums are likely into November.

Someone told me back in August that this was the best summer in several years, in terms of fruit and vegetables. He was talking about how much fruit and how good it was; is it usual for there to be nectarines and berries through much if not all of September?

Meanwhile, rhododendrons are flowering. Not one random blossom: this went from a single branch I saw on one bush, and a few separated blossoms on another, to a small bushes that are behaving entirely as if it's spring, with bright flowers on all or most of their branches: bright purple on 102nd Avenue near the QFC, and two bushes with white flowers on NE 6th Street near the Westin. I also saw a couple of anomalous yellow irises (one plant, next to that first rhododendron branch last week). The periwinkles go merrily along, a blossom here and a few there; back in New York and Boston, those are spring flowers, and the occasional patch with a few blossoms left is a June thing, not a September one. cattitude and I keep stopping and looking at periwinkle patches, no longer surprised, but just because we like periwinkles.

[Yes, this is a small thing, but I'll want to remember it, and I don't think I have anything useful to add about the Republicans trying to hold us all for ransom via the government shutdown.]

It's still all green, but the heat is on, for the first time this season. With a predicted low of 40 F (5 C), I'm glad of it.

roadnotes came up here for the afternoon, and she, cattitude, and I had a pleasant afternoon of conversation and tea-drinking. News, people, and me trying to get a handle on why I've been feeling tense. The time with her helped ease it, though, which may be more useful than tracking down the cause(s). We talked about pasts and the fallibility of memory (I'm particularly bad at tracking duration), work in its various aspects, and people, past, present, and we hope future.

Most of the leaves are still green here, with splashes of red and yellow, especially on vines and some of the ailanthus and ginkgo trees.

But the weather is feeling autumnal: strong winds, and a brief but heavy rainfall this afternoon (after a night of lighter rain and an overcast morning). I went out to return a library book this afternoon, after the rain had passed. On my way out, I saw pavement covered with ginkgo fruits, most of them still intact and I'm guessing only recently fallen. (Yes, they smell bad when squashed or broken.) On the way back, while I was waiting for a bus, the wind gusted and large pieces of bark came off a tree trunk next to the sidewalk, some of them from several feet up. They looked and sounded quite heavy, enough that I wasn't the only person who wanted to be sure not to be under or otherwise close to that tree.

The high wind warning is through midnight; it might be a good weekend to go up into the hills again, and look for hawks, confusing fall warblers, or any other migrants passing through.

I've been feeling rather stressed for the last few days. cattitude and I decided on Friday that a long walk in the park would help, and after looking at the weather forecast, picked today. (We were right: yesterday was gray and chilly, today was clear and pleasantly warm.) That we hadn't been up there in months suggests that evakanner (a.k.a. "Mom") was right that I've still got some recovering/regaining of strength from having been sick for a month; that the walk didn't feel strenuous tells me that I'm making progress toward that goal. (Sleeping longer would help.)

The walk started, of course, down next to the salt marsh. High tide, a bit higher than normal (the NWS was talking about "minor coastal flooding" at high tide yesterday and this morning), and we think we saw a turtle swimming, just its head above the surface. Along the side of the soccer field, and a bit of deep purple at the roadside: one violet, in bloom. We're used to occasional autumn violets, but not until after first frost. Right now, most of the trees are still green or just beginning to turn red and yellow, and it's not been close to frost here in Manhattan yet. The violet was a pleasant surprise, as was the one periwinkle flower we saw up in the hills. The occasional flares of bright leaves were a branch here and there, mostly, or red ivy and creeper climbing walls and tree-trunks.

All that greenery meant that we saw far fewer birds than we heard, but the kinglets are back (Cattitude had seen them in the last day or two, but these were my first of the season, with a chickadee in the same tree). We heard a lot of cardinals, and eventually saw one or two: they hide remarkably well, for bright-red birds against green leaves and blue sky.

The bald eagle reintroduction project seems to be over (they'd planned five years, and this was the fifth). The fences are down, and we could walk down paths that had been blocked off and labeled with warnings about endangered species. We took one familiar dirt path, and I was surprised to find how clear it was after this long, until we got to the base of the hacking box and realized it had been used daily by the falconers, to bring fish and keep an eye on the birds. There had been a path leading north and uphill from there to the paved road just above; that path is gone now, overgrown by brambles.

The view from the high meadow (I think it's "Overlook Meadow" on the Parks Dept. map) was fine, some boats on the river and clear enough that we could easily see north to the Tappan Zee.

One of these days I'm going up there with either my wildflower book, or a camera, so I have a better chance of naming more of the flowers we've been seeing for years. There's a little viny purple-and-yellow one that I suspect of being either forget-me-not or something of the violet kin, but I'm really not sure, growing in the tops of the walls, including the one on the downhill edge of the formerly closed-off path. I think I did identify some waxy white berries, as snowberry: not only does it look right, but the book says it grows on rocky banks and on roadsides, and this one is on a rocky roadside.

[I ducked out with Cattitude before posting this, and am reminded: at dusk, now, some of the trees are full of starlings, chattering flocks arranging for the fall migration south. The robins are gathering in flocks, three or seven or a couple of dozen on a lawn, passing through on their way south.]

I went out for a walk in the park about an hour ago. It rained pretty hard in the morning, and was still gray and overcast, so there were very few humans in the park.

The mallards and Canada geese were mostly on the lawns between the water and Indian Road, some grazing, some just sitting there, some walking around but not grazing. That, more than the temperature (mid-60s F/upper teens C), felt autumnal.

The two egrets sitting on the new kayak/canoe dock aren't particularly seasonal, but it was good to see that the birds like the new metal dock as well as the decrepit concrete it replaced. (The concrete was well past use for ducks, though fine to walk on except at high tide.) I stopped and talked briefly with someone sitting on a bench, who confirmed that yes, there were two—I'd been sure of one on the railing and one on the dock itself, then came closer and the lower one was hard to see, so I asked him. Another few steps toward him, and both were clearly visible again.

As cattitude and I were walking home through the park last night, a firefly lit up next to us, about waist-high. A moment later, another, on my other side. I took a moment, chased on, and got it to land on my hand for a moment, though it flew off before lighting again.

This afternoon, I was standing on the lawn across the street (also in the park), watching the swallows swooping after mosquitos, and realized that one of the swooping animals I was watching was a dragonfly. Having identified one, I spotted a couple more: they're a lot smaller and lighter, and move a bit differently, but you notice the kind of thing you're looking for, and I've been watching the swallows for weeks. This is the first dragonfly I've seen in 2006, fittingly just after the solstice.

The last Saturday of the Inwood Greenmarket, which is in easy walking distance of my home, was 17 December. Our fishmonger told us this last week, and added that he'd be in Union Square Greenmarket (which is year-round) but not until he comes back from a month's vacation fishing in Costa Rica. It pleases me that he enjoys fishing, isn't out there on the boat just because it's a living.

Not all the vendors seem to have realized that the last local Greenmarket until June was last week. The street wasn't closed to traffic, but four vendors were there, with their stalls set up on the sidewalk and the adjoining lawn.

The organic meats came from the people who sell us meatloaf sometimes. They were cheerfully handing out samples, which is how we wound up buying a ham. The chicken parts are a cutlet, and two bags of wings that will go into soup. We were too late for legs and thighs, because we needed to get lunch and go to the supermarket first. (Clementines!) We asked, and paid, for one bag of wings; the man threw in a second. All the chicken went directly from their freezer to ours; when I'm ready to make stock, a bag of wings and some duck bones will come out of the freezer. The ham is for tomorrow night.

Apples because apples are good, and local apples are particularly good. Macouns, if I recall correctly--I was a little spacey, and asked cattitude to select the apples. And the sweet baked goods because I like them, I've given up on the banana bread, and it will be better for my shoulder if I don't make cakelings right now.