we'll just call it a fallow year

Behold the most intensive and successful agriculture going on in my backyard this year:

I ruined it shortly after taking the photo, though I'm sure I haven't deterred them for good. The host plant there is a red elderberry, and despite being the site of an extensive aphid farm it's thriving -- I planted it as a bare-root stick this spring and it's now tall enough to look me in the eyes, with rich green foliage and plenty of it. It's honestly the most successful of its group. The ants know how to pick a good farm site, I guess.

Mostly things are not happening this year. I spent some crucial months being not well enough to support the garden the way it needed, and now that we're having an alarmingly hot and extra-dry summer it's too late to recover any of the spring annual crops. I did get a few small onions out of the back garden, and the cherry tree I planted last year bore enough cherries this year for a batch of really delicious syrup to pour over ice cream (pit 2 cups tart cherries, place in small pot with 1/4 cup local honey, heat gently until boiling, simmer a few minutes, cool a little bit and serve). So it's not a complete loss? But a very good thing I'm not depending on my direct efforts for any substantial amount of food.

I'm going to have to attack the southeast corner of the garden with power tools, I think, where the neighbors haven't rooted out a blackberry problem and now it has spilled over the fence with a vengeance. And probably I should just sheet mulch 95% of the garden at this point and start over when the rains come back. Well. One learns even when one doesn't produce.

la grisouille

My dad, who lived in Seattle for a few years before moving back east, emailed me recently to tell me the French have a word for Seattle winter: la grisouille, the chilly damp darkness that seems to go on forever. Okay, actually it's a word for Paris winter, but we have a lot in common, with the high latitude and large water body to the west affecting the local climate. We are deep in la grisouille right now, though I at least take a late enough train that the sun is up (somewhere behind the clouds) before I leave the house. This morning, the storm was over and the weather was clear enough for the crows to be commuting at the same time I was—there's a substantial crow population that roosts down in Renton and flies into Seattle in the mornings to do their daily scavenging, just like people. I find them so charming every time my schedule matches up with theirs.

And of course we're almost to the turning point already, the hinge where the dark stops getting darker and the sun is reborn. I'm going to make it. This winter, like all the winters before it, won't undo me. I'll see la grisouille melt, the first daffodils pushing their way up through the earth, the first buds turning to blossoms on trees. The wheel turns. We're headed that way soon.

Note to self: first frost at the house this year was on November 10.

The Dark Season is well and truly upon us, which means there's little to no time for doing chores outside on weekdays; the sun's rising as I leave in the morning, and well down by the time I get off the bus home. But I found a warm red coat in the by-the-pound bins at Goodwill last weekend that probably cost me about $5, and now I am considerably more visible in people's headlights when I'm walking home in the dark.

We're currently having what passes for a cold snap in Seattle, the very edge of the freezing Jetstream produced when the remains of Nuri stormed into Alaska. Of course, "cold" around here means the lows are around freezing, which really shouldn't feel like a big deal after almost ten years in/around Philly and one terrible winter in Denver. That was practically a lifetime ago, though. Sometimes I wonder if anyone I knew back then would grok what I've become. The guy I moved to Denver with probably wouldn't. If anyone would, it's probably the Badgers; I hope they're doing well. Jimmi O'Badger, if you ever google yourself, we went to school together and you knew me as Lilith - drop me a line.

The me from back then was more brittle, I think, and also trying a lot harder to front about it. I was a surly little rivethead, who would have embraced news about this "internet of things" concept out of a sense of nihilism: if you can't fight the dystopia, you might as well take grim satisfaction in seeing it coming. Now I'm... well, maybe slightly less nihilistic. Still doing optimism wrong, because now I look at that and think, "It won't be able to last, between the people who refuse to be so intensely monitored and the increasing number of people who just can't afford all those toys. And they're depending on a lot of finite resources to build and sustain that stuff anyway." Which is more comforting than living in the consumer panopticon for the rest of my life, at least.

Plans for the rest of November: pick up the pace on making solstice presents for people; haul tomatoes and peaches out of the freezer and can some stuff now that it's cold out; mow the damn lawn one more time if it's ever dry on a weekend; jury duty; friendsgiving.

rain!

Yay! First we've had so far this month. Weather.com claims it's half an inch so far, but I think it may be a little more. I'd like to claim responsibility for it -- I watered almost everything in the backyard yesterday -- but it seems much more likely that it was the neighbor washing his car who spurred the clouds into action. :)


Next time I can get some photos uploaded I need to make happy noises about foraging blackberries, too.