the blue muse

For surely autumn is upon us, summer having already flown off to vacation elsewhere, and September came dressed as October.

I don’t mind so much, really, fall is my favorite time of year, though it feels a bit like time is moving too quickly. Then again, it always feels that way at this time of year.

But already, the field across the street has been laid bare, the nights are cold enough for closed windows and furnace heat, the first indoor fire has warmed my toes.

My monskhood has yet to bloom, buds have formed and we will see, some years it blooms in October, some, November, and some years, it never blooms at all.

These perennial sunflowers are thugs, big, bold, beautiful thugs, ruling with their unruliness. I keep cutting them down and they keep showing up in new places, another lesson from the garden on how little I control. I can’t blame this happy flower though, turning its face to the sun, reaching high into the sky, hoping to touch the soft wisp of autumn cloud.

I pulled weeds yesterday, crazy, overgrown, sometimes-taller-than-me weeds, restoring order to small sections of earth in a futile gesture of optimism. They always grow back, but perhaps that is the point. If I didn’t have to fight them, I may not have spent those hours outside, listening to birds and grasshoppers and the crazy crickets that are everywhere this year (even in my bedroom).

Summer. Autumn. Summer. Autumn.

No matter. I breathe it in.

And it’s good, all good, even the mess of it.

It smells of change.