Tag: walnuts

We’ve Seen Nothing Yet

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Enter autumn as you would 
a closing door. Quickly, 
cautiously. Look for something inside 
that promises color, but be wary 
of its cast — a desolate reflection, 
an indelible tint.
~Pamela Steed Hill  “September Pitch”

Summer begins to have the look
Peruser of enchanting Book
Reluctantly but sure perceives–
A gain upon the backward leaves

Autumn begins to be inferred
By millinery of the cloud
Or deeper color in the shawl
That wraps the everlasting hill.

The eye begins its avarice
A meditation chastens speech
Some Dyer of a distant tree
Resumes his gaudy industry.

Conclusion is the course of All
Almost to be perennial
And then elude stability
Recalls to immortality.
~Emily Dickinson, Poem 65

This hot summer now wanes, wistful;
it has the look of packing up,
and moving on
without bidding adieu
or looking back over its shoulder.

I wave goodbye without regret; it leaves behind a hot mess
of burned landscape and drought.

Blustery winds have carried in darkening clouds
spread green leaves, chestnuts and walnuts everywhere,
loosened before their time.
Long overdue rain
gave us a good drenching
worth celebrating.

Overhead skies are heavily burdened
with clues of what more is coming:
earlier dusk,
the cool feel of moisture,
the deepening graying purplish hues,
the briskness of breezes.

There is no negotiation possible.
I steel myself and get ready,
wrapping myself in my perennial soft shawl of inevitability.

So autumn advances forth with its clouds,
taking up residence as summer moves out,
bringing its own unique plans for redecorating
using an array of hues and textures.

The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.

You can find more beautiful photos and words in this Barnstorming book, available to order here:

A Time to Sleep

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Season of ripening fruit and seeds, depart;
There is no harvest ripening in the heart.

Bring the frost that strikes the dahlias down
In one cruel night. The blackened buds, the brown
And wilted heads, the crippled stems, we crave –
All beauty withered, crumbling to the grave.
Wind, strip off the leaves, and harden, ground,
Till in your frozen crust no break is found.

Then only, when man’s inner world is one
With barren earth and branches bared to bone,
Then only can the heart begin to know
The seeds of hope asleep beneath the snow;
Then only can the chastened spirit tap
The hidden faith still pulsing in the sap.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Our farm has been changing dramatically over the past several weeks, each day moving a little closer to the reality of winter around the corner. Most of the fruit which is not residing in our freezer has fallen from the trees, and the walnut husks are hanging lonesome and bulbous as a windstorm pulled many leaves to the ground creating a multi-colored carpet everywhere I walk.
Readying for winter’s sleep is quite a glamorous affair for some trees on our farm–they are clothed in rich crimson and gold like the most alluring and ostentatious negligee. However the majority of tree leaves turn drab yellow or brown, as if donning a practical flannel nightgown or an oversized t-shirt without any pretense of grandeur. Even our Haflinger horses laze about, comfortable in their soft winter woolie coats and feathered slippers, happy with their gift of hay. I’m understand their contentment as I prefer fluffy flannel myself.This has not been a leisurely autumn for me, instead full of turbulence and fretfulness, too much work to do in too few hours,  rushing full force toward the hoped-for calm and quiet of winter. Like so many others, I’m ill at ease with this transition, as unready as a small child who resists the approach of bedtime, even when exhausted to the point of meltdown. It takes someone to quietly sit down with me to read a good bedtime story and to sing a soft hymn of lullaby. I keep leaping up, eyes propped open, pushing on, aware there are still too many “miles to go before I sleep”.

The time to sleep will come, sooner than I think. Just as a storm brings the leaves to the ground, so shall I be laid to rest, to be restored when the time is right.

Maybe I should think about wearing that bright red nightie.
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Leaves and Bounding Fruit

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My mother and I debate:
we could sell
the black walnut tree
to the lumberman,
and pay off the mortgage.
Likely some storm anyway
will churn down its dark boughs,
smashing the house. We talk
slowly, two women trying
in a difficult time to be wise.
Roots in the cellar drains,
I say, and she replies
that the leaves are getting heavier
every year, and the fruit
harder to gather away.
But something brighter than money
moves in our blood – an edge
sharp and quick as a trowel
that wants us to dig and sow.
So we talk, but we don’t do
anything.

What my mother and I both know
is that we’d crawl with shame
in the emptiness we’d made
in our own and our fathers’ backyard.
So the black walnut tree
swings through another year
of sun and leaping winds,
of leaves and bounding fruit,
and, month after month, the whip-
crack of the mortgage.
~Mary Oliver from “The Black Walnut Tree” from Twelve Moons

 

We bought this old farm twenty five years ago:
the Lawrence family “Walnut Hill Farm”~
a front yard lined with several tall black walnut trees
brought as seedlings in a suitcase from Ohio
in the ought-1900’s.

These trees thrived for 80 years on this hilltop farm
overlooking the Canadian mountains to the north,
the Nooksack River valley to the west,
the Cascade peaks to the east,
each prolific in leaves
and prodigious in fruit.

The first year we were here,
a windstorm took one tree down.
A neighbor offered
to mill the twisted trunk for shares
so the fallen tree became planks
of fine grained chocolate hued lumber.

This old tree lines our kitchen cupboards,
a daily reminder of an immortality
living on in a legacy left behind~
sturdy while imperfect,
so beautiful to the eye and the heart.

 

 

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BriarCroft in Autumn

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“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
– Emily Dickinson

“Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt?
What profit from the violet’s day of pain?
– Helen Hunt Jackson, Autumn Sonnet “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being.
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead,
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.”
– Percy Bysshe Shelley

“How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.
At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.”
 –   Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

“I saw the lovely arch
Of rainbow span the sky,
The gold sun burning
As the rain swept by.”
– Elizabeth Coatsworth, November

“Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem:
There’s not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy of silence or of sound
Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.”
– Laman Blanchard

“The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds in flocks return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words.”
– Tao Yuan Ming

“A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn.  The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature.  The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief.  Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.”
– Henri Frederic Amiel

“Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.”
– Elizabeth Lawrence

BriarCroft in Spring

BriarCroft in Summer

BriarCroft in Winter

BriarCroft at Year’s End

Changing Clothes

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photo by Josh Scholten

The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.
Henry Beston

The change of seasons this week offered no gradual transition to ease us gently into autumn– three months of daily sun and balmy temperatures became gray, rainy, windy, stormy cuddle-down cold overnight.   It is a terrible shock to our physiology as well as our wardrobe.  Sweaters and jackets that have not seen the light of day for months are suddenly front and center in the closet.  Sandals are shoved way to the back once again.  Only last week I was still sneaking out to the barn to do morning chores in my pajamas and slippers but now am trussed up in my Carhartts, gloves and muck boots.

Tough as it is reconcile to shorter days and chilly temperatures, I do appreciate the absolute drama of it all.  Golden leaves dance up and down in the gusts, as if searching for the exactly perfect landing and forever resting spot.  The fallen walnuts inside their round green husks are scattered everywhere underfoot well hidden among the leaves, making navigating are yard’s pathways hazardous, especially in the dark.  I’ve never been good at walking on marbles and these are ping pong ball size marbles.

So all bundled up I pick my way carefully to the barn, wanting not to be embarrassed by falling flat on my face and or by watching trees stripped naked right before my eyes.   As they unceremoniously shed their leafy coats to reveal their skinny skeletons, I’m piling on layers on over my…. layers.

I’m treading on their sacred leavings, much like inadvertently walking across poorly marked graves at a cemetery.   It is truly holy ground.

photo by Josh Scholten

The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn

~John Muir