It is a fall yard clean up and get it together kind of day and man, do we ever get the deadwood out and the bulbs and bare roots in...
We work all sides of the farmhouse – pruning pines, hydrangeas, bushes, clipping dead stalks and limbs, heaving branches, mowing down patches of who knows what.
And we finish the fall planting too. In go the irises, the crocuses, the roses from my patio pots, the leftover narcissus.
We do it all.
We are not alone. To the east of the farmette, the truck farmers are raking and burning spent stalks.
The smell of autumn.
We hose down our planted spaces and scrape mud off our shoes and call it a day.
I bike back to town, past fields of bronze and gold, egged on by huge flocks of birds, circling, cawing, mocking me for my slow speed – at least as compared with their own.
I pick up the bike path...
...and scoot down to meet my daughter for a drink on State Street before it turns totally nuts down there (it’s the day of the great Halloween bash; these days it is fortified with barricades and plenty of police to keep the event sane).
After, we take a short stroll – up and down the street that is never as perfectly free of cars and buses as on this day. It's got the goblins and the reapers instead.
We don't stay out incredibly long though. It's cold and she has plans and I have plans and so we go our separate ways – me, to meet up with Ed again and fall asleep watching a sad movie, she, to party and dance and who knows what else these young types do wth their night hours.
Ahh -- a typical Ocean near-midnight moment – the eyes close, the fingers aren’t quite done typing the post for the day...
Happy Halloween Eve. And good night.
