Annual change underway

When November approaches my days have a new rhythm.  I am up in time to watch the sun rise.  It may be pink or orange or some shades of both. I can drink my coffee and eat my breakfast as I watch the sky change.  The above sky was three days ago. It will never be the same but, except for totally gray mornings as today was, it will always be fascinating colors.

Yesterday was nicely warm after several cool day.  As I walked to the beach for what may be one of the last warm walks of the year, I stopped to smell the roses at a house that has a nice border. The fresh new one had wonderful, true rose scent; the one behind it was withering and will disappear with the next wind and rain.  I am always surprised how hearty some roses are here on the Cape.  Before long the frost and then snow will tell these beauties to sleep until the Prince in the form of spring sun comes to wake them again.

Pumpkin time

Every year a traditional New England style white church on Rte. 28 in Yarmouth, here on Cape Cod fills it's expansive lawn with pallets of pumpkins, from large to small -- a sea of orange with green paths between. It's a gorgeous, autumn sight. For years I've muttered that I must take a photo. Today I took a few, this is one that show the size and expansiveness of the display. 

Pumpkins are not a favorite food of mine and I'm not enticed by the various "pumpkin spice" flavoring being offered everywhere from Starbucks to Dunkin' Donuts. Nor am I a holiday fan of pumpkin pie.  I do love their brilliant color and enjoy driving past that church  all of October. 

There are now white pumpkins for sale in the grocery stores.  They seem like freaks of nature, possibly grown so people can paint extravagant faces on them. Or maybe just "because it can be done."  We never stop tinkering with nature. I can't help remembering the first line of a James Whitcomb Riley poem: "When the frost in on the pumpkin and the fodder's in the shock..."  Once America's most quoted poet, (early 20th century) now forgotten.  A Hoosier, so we read him in school back home in Indiana.  I find it satisfying to think about how quickly hacks are forgotten.

Autumn is here

The new header is rose hips -- the red from red roses (natch) and the yellow from white roses.  They are full of vitamin C and they make good jam. I've been told how to do it but I haven't and probably won't. I use very little jam. I understand they also can be the basis of good teas but that I probably won't do either as I mostly prefer a black tea or a peppermint one.  But they're pretty! I understand you can't dry them (they shrivel up) and use them for Christmas tree decorations which sounds lovely .... but, alas, impossible.

 I often chat a bit a man who goes to the beach I prefer to walk on for a long day of sunning on weekends.  He works during the week.  We are "regulars" as is a woman I often chat with too.  (She feeds the gulls.) This man wanders along the beach, sometimes collecting can and other junk to put in the garbage barrel as he leaves.  One day I saw he had a gallon-size plastic zip baggie of rose hips.  I asked if he or his wife planned to make jam.  He said, "No, they're for the rabbits."  He explained two little brown rabbits live at the far edge of his lawn and one day he had brought home some rose hips which is wife didn't want.  So he put them out for the rabbits to eat if they wanted.  They very much wanted!  They loved them. Now they come into the yard looking to the house waiting for rose hips which he keeps in the refrigerator and doles out sparingly.  He says they have even sometimes come up to the patio slider and looked in. 

UDDATE about the manatee:  She swam around for nearly a month and then was  caught and taken to a marine animal center in Mystic, Connecticutt where she was given a pool of water about 60 degrees, and examined. They found she was pregnant.  The last I heard the plan was to take her back to Florida. I hope she survives.