Some gardeners refer to September as “the second spring.” The heat and dry dust of summer has passed, rain returns and fast-growing plants like lettuce can be sown and brought to table before the first frost does them in. Or so we’re led to believe. A phrase from Grace Paley, “green as green September” returns to my mind every year.
Well, maybe and maybe not. This whole lettuce in September business was never part of my childhood in Western New York, because the first frost could, and usually did, come long before any September-planted lettuce would be ready. “Second Spring” was more of a mid-Atlantic state thing.
Now the mid-Atlantic climate is here. A research professor in plant and soil sciences told me a few years back that it’s helpful for a person of my age to think of Vermont as Maryland in terms of climate. Things have changed that much.
The remnants of Hurricane Isaac blew through Tuesday night, soaking us with the most rain we’ve gotten in quite some time, but it was a short, intense rain, the kind that runs off and leaves dry soil an inch below the surface. I know Bob Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” about the threat of nuclear war – the song turned 50 this summer – but listening now seems an eerie prediction of a post-global warming world.
The grape arbor collapsed again. This time a crossbar snapped under the weight of the crop, as our mock-Mediterranean summer produced my best crop yet. I got it back in place with splints and should re-build the whole thing after the grapes are in, with cedar this time. By rights, I should be crushing out grape juice or putting up preserves, but I’ve too busy. Instead of reaping nature’s bounty, I’ve spent my summer trying to help stop Royal Dutch Shell drilling in the Arctic Ocean and watching the sea ice melt away as it has not done in 8,000 years.
I’m inviting all the neighbors to come and take what they can from the arbor or just stand in its shade and eat. The bee hives are heavy with honey, they each produced about 100 pounds this year and that too is shared out with the neighbors, just as we have been the recipients of berries and pears and vegetables too various to mention. In this new world we have to both take care of those around us and take our pleasures when we can. Generosity is the greatest luxury; it always has been. It’s a lesson we’ll need to remember.
I spent Labor Day weekend in the woods with friends, at the edge of a hydroelectric reservoir, no more natural than a swimming pool. The compromises of 21st-century camping. I was the first to arrive Friday afternoon and sat on a rock on the Eastern shore as storm passed by. Thunder, lightning and rain surged to the north, sunbeams coursed through clouds to the south. The storm’s edge passed directly over me, dropping an intermittent rain that left me dry beneath an overhanging maple.
Green as green September. A new world, remade not as we would have wished, but one that will offer opportunities for compassion and community as well as hardship. We will learn, in ways we can scarcely imagine, just how luxurious generosity is, either by its presence or absence. There are now fewer “ifs” about the territory into which we have entered. The years ahead will be difficult, how difficult will depend on the choices we have still to make.
On Jane Street in October
I saw three ginkgo trees
the first is naked to the bony branch
the second is a dance of little golden fans
the third is green as green September
The Second Spring
Some gardeners refer to September as “the second spring.” The heat and dry dust of summer has passed, rain returns and fast-growing plants like lettuce can be sown and brought to table before the first frost does them in. Or so we’re led to believe. A phrase from Grace Paley, “green as green September” returns to my mind every year.
Well, maybe and maybe not. This whole lettuce in September business was never part of my childhood in Western New York, because the first frost could, and usually did, come long before any September-planted lettuce would be ready. “Second Spring” was more of a mid-Atlantic state thing.
Now the mid-Atlantic climate is here. A research professor in plant and soil sciences told me a few years back that it’s helpful for a person of my age to think of Vermont as Maryland in terms of climate. Things have changed that much.
The remnants of Hurricane Isaac blew through Tuesday night, soaking us with the most rain we’ve gotten in quite some time, but it was a short, intense rain, the kind that runs off and leaves dry soil an inch below the surface. I know Bob Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” about the threat of nuclear war – the song turned 50 this summer – but listening now seems an eerie prediction of a post-global warming world.
The grape arbor collapsed again. This time a crossbar snapped under the weight of the crop, as our mock-Mediterranean summer produced my best crop yet. I got it back in place with splints and should re-build the whole thing after the grapes are in, with cedar this time. By rights, I should be crushing out grape juice or putting up preserves, but I’ve too busy. Instead of reaping nature’s bounty, I’ve spent my summer trying to help stop Royal Dutch Shell drilling in the Arctic Ocean and watching the sea ice melt away as it has not done in 8,000 years.
I’m inviting all the neighbors to come and take what they can from the arbor or just stand in its shade and eat. The bee hives are heavy with honey, they each produced about 100 pounds this year and that too is shared out with the neighbors, just as we have been the recipients of berries and pears and vegetables too various to mention. In this new world we have to both take care of those around us and take our pleasures when we can. Generosity is the greatest luxury; it always has been. It’s a lesson we’ll need to remember.
I spent Labor Day weekend in the woods with friends, at the edge of a hydroelectric reservoir, no more natural than a swimming pool. The compromises of 21st-century camping. I was the first to arrive Friday afternoon and sat on a rock on the Eastern shore as storm passed by. Thunder, lightning and rain surged to the north, sunbeams coursed through clouds to the south. The storm’s edge passed directly over me, dropping an intermittent rain that left me dry beneath an overhanging maple.
Green as green September. A new world, remade not as we would have wished, but one that will offer opportunities for compassion and community as well as hardship. We will learn, in ways we can scarcely imagine, just how luxurious generosity is, either by its presence or absence. There are now fewer “ifs” about the territory into which we have entered. The years ahead will be difficult, how difficult will depend on the choices we have still to make.
© Mark Floegel, 2012
An Arboreal Mystery
On Jane Street in October
I saw three ginkgo trees
the first is naked to the bony branch
the second is a dance of little golden fans
the third is green as green September
– Grace Paley