It’s late September and Fall starts by the calendar in the next couple of days. It actually started about three weeks ago reckoned by dropping temperatures and increasing humidity. I quIte like this time of year. Cool temperatures and refreshing rain. I managed to get out yesterday. We went to the official opening of our new firehall and to the Foggy Mountain Fall Fair where we bought some T-shirts at the Cumberland Community Forest Society booth and some goodies (including Palestinian organic olive oil) at the World Community booth before getting some lunch from a food truck the name of which escapes me (Farmers something or other- the food was excellent). I was quite tired from a poor night’s sleep the night before, but everything turned out okay. I had a nap when we came home while Carolyn went out for coffee with a friend. Chemotherapy is keeping me alive but there is a price to pay. I get tired easily and the pain is still a big part of my life. The fact that I’m seventy-four years old may also have something to do with my lack of spark! Of course it does! I’m walking some, and I’m going to try riding my bike later this week when there is less rain in the forecast. I’m willing to pay the price. I always seem to benefit from exercise even though there is short term pain involved. I’d sure like to get off hydromorphone and gabapentin, but the withdrawal symptoms are hard to take. Tomorrow I hope to get some work done on the canoe. I may just do a blog post on that project alone. I’ve done a bit of drawing lately too but my neck pain really puts a damper on any sustained drawing practice. Sometimes I wear a neck brace and that helps.

Plant life here in the garden is both rejoicing at the rainfall, and at the same time preparing for the dormancy of Fall or the end of life. The vegetable garden is almost done. The raspberry plants are still throwing out a few stragglers but are pretty much done as are the blueberries. We picked the pears a couple of days ago and the plums a couple of days before that. We now have several jars of delicious plum jam thanks to Carolyn’s hard work. The pears aren’t quite ripe yet so we’ll wait until the end of the week to process them. That’s always a bit of a chore, but the results are worth it.

The ferns and grasses are still standing firm against the oncoming seasonal changes, but most of the flowers are giving up and bowing to the need to get some sleep. A few, like the begonias, sedums, and Black-eyed Susans

still buck the trend and proudly flaunt their colours against the overwhelming greens and browns of the fall and winter. Of course, speaking of colour, winter could also bring the white of snow, but that won’t be for some time yet. The long term forecast is for snow early in the season this year, but we’ll wait to see what happens. It’s always a crap shoot as to when the snow will come on the mountains, but the ski hill on Mount Washington generally aims to open in early December. It doesn’t always work out that way because the freezing levels are fickle in this area and it’s possible that skiing won’t happen until January. We should see the first snow on the Beaufort Range soon. Logging is about to start again close to the Village too. I’m of two (maybe three) minds about that. As a woodworker I can hardly condemn the practice of cutting timber and I know that my pension plan is invested in forestry companies, but I’m not keen on seeing logs go offshore to be processed either and I’m interested in learning more about how clearcutting and road building affect carbon sequestration and the production of atmospheric oxygen. We don’t have to worry about running out of atmospheric oxygen just yet (Google it). The processes of atmospheric change fascinate me at a scientific level. I’m particularly interested in long-term modelling of atmospheric change.

The pond is full after the recent torrential rain. The sticklebacks will probably survive the winter as they have over the past few years (except for the year of the turtle!), but it would be good to keep Tilly out of it so as not to disturb their nests. That won’t be an issue as we enter Fall. Next summer she will be over two years old and we’re hoping she will leave the pond alone. That’s probably an empty hope. For now, Tilly loves the pond and she wades in it often then comes into the house to shake, spraying water everywhere. Yes, she is a bit of a brat.

I’m not sure why I’m making note of this here, but this sculpture lives up by the pond area under a big cedar tree and surrounded by ferns. I finished it with spar varnish the year I carved it (maybe three or four years ago?) and I thought about refinishing it because it’s showing signs of deterioration. However, I decided to leave it and let entropy take its course. I’m not concerned about how long it will last in the elements but it will be around long enough for me to enjoy it.

I guess that I’m attracted to the changes of seasons rather than to the seasons in their full bloom. That may be because the times that mark seasonal change are the best reminders of entropy and its importance in our lives and in life generally on this planet. I quite enjoy this time of year even though it marks the end of the warmth of summer and the beginning of the cold of fall nights and winter days. I’m not a big fan of the heat of summer or the cold of winter. I’m more a middling kind of guy.

Ta ta for now.