Driving around between Millbrook and Poughkeepsie, crossing the bridge to get apples in New Paltz, gazing to the right and left, there’s no mistaking the passing of fall – fewer and fewer leaves on the trees, ever duller colors on the leaves that remain. Vegetable gardens have been tidied for winter, there are miles of black plastic deer fence in place.
Yet it keeps bouncing back to t-shirt weather, prompting vague guilts that one should be at work outdoors, even though there’s really nothing left to do – assuming all the bulbs are finally in – except rake leaves, mow grass and rake more leaves.
This should be the start of time off, the northern gardeners’ reward. It should be a time of seed catalog by the fire, cup of hot cider near to hand, possibly a little Thanksgiving menu planning: heavy on the home grown greens and squash, maybe a spiced cream of tomato soup from the puree in the freezer.
Instead, we had BLT’s for lunch just 4 days ago, with the almost-last of the saved fresh fruit and went out in search of mushrooms. There should be blewits and shaggy manes, but there aren’t, and the last of the big agaricus, but all that rain must have come too late – all we saw were enough autumn galerina to poison most of the county and an impressive fruiting of stinkhorns, erecting though deep piles of leaves.