9.13.15 Wandering about the valley, we see the fields chock full

Wandering about the valley, we see the fields chock full of Butternut Squash, laying out by their vines, or stacked into enormous wooden boxes. The soy is coming to fruition, as are all the fruit trees, dropping their beautiful apples all along the ground. Trucks piled with cow corn, with potatoes, rumble along, as tractors appear everywhere, hard at work as the harvest approaches. 

In my herb garden, the Scarlet Runner bean has gone crazy this year, pulling upon the arch with it's weight. Soon, it will be that time, as it is every year, to go out and pull down the dried bean pods, clean the beautiful hard purple and black beans from them, and save them for next year. Such a lineage of generations, when we save our seed. 

The Kales are all thigh high, having endured the cabbage worms, which I pick off nightly from the broad leaves I bring in for dinner, and perversely carry gently to the front door, popping them down into the annual bed. 

The soil is becoming so damp that I will begin checking the various Maitake spots, always under stately Oaks, to harvest at their peak. For years, I've been making the flower essence, then the hot water extraction, to be added to organic alcohol. 

I kept making it and not using it , and then giving it to my friends Pat and Ken, who have been running my herb business. Til this year it turns out it is one of a zillion things that are essential for my husband. Go figure. So this year I will both harvest and prepare whatever beautiful plants I come upon, and too, keep checking with Whole Foods, as in the fall, they sell Maitake as an edible mushroom, that you also can hot water extract for yourself, and then make an alcohol extraction. 

In the meantime, all the hordes of baby birds are merrily racing about, having a grand time, and I know not whether they have any premonition of what is to come. 

But I have once again made my peace, with the survival of the fittest. With the way that sometimes, a lifetime is a beautiful delicious summer, and no more. With how crowded it truly would be, if every sparrow and crow did survive the winter times.