|
Old Point Reyes Schoolhouse Homework Report
by Karen Gray
September, 2006 - The sun is moving lower in the sky as the days shorten while the fruit of last spring's rain ripens to a bumper crop. The blackberries along the creeks and roadsides are heavy and glistening on their branches this year. My niece, a friend, and I just put up four dozen pints of blackberry jam after only a couple hours of picking in the afternoon sunshine. A few young garter snakes slithered off the trail as we approached. The dogs surprised a fox in the thicket who flashed away as the California quail chipped softly in the dry grasses - prey and predator sharing the same home. It's my guess that she was the same vixen who has raised her kits in a den back there for years. Song sparrows were flitting through the brambles. We talked about the number of animals besides ourselves who would make a meal from these blackberries: coyote, song birds, racoon, blue jays, skunks, yellow jackets, deer, mice and wood rats. (In the old days we would have counted bears.) As the days shorten and the nights dampen with fog the ripe fruit will mold rapidly and fall from the red and green branches, another blackberry season passed.
Flocks of Canada geese are flying over the compound heading south. They stop over in the marshes and pastures along Tomales Bay so they are still moving low over the land, so low that we see individuals clearly and hear their wings on the air as they pass overhead. As they move along their migratory route they will gain altitude and their honking calls will get fainter, a barely audible sound from a distant, undulating "v" in the sky. Soon hunting season will begin and my husband and son will bring home duck for the table: mallard, teal, canvas back, widgeon. Their feathers will go for tying the flies that trick salmon and steel head through the rainy season, for the trout next spring and summer. The taste of wild duck is one of my earliest childhood memories, always mixed with caution because of the risk of buckshot in the meat.
California Indian Summer is here on the Schoolhouse Compound: spiking temperatures mixed with the cooling nights of fall. The heat is hard on the compound flower gardens but good for the pumpkins and apples developing their sugar at the end of the season. My chard bed is thriving with it's large, colorful stems of orange, burgundy and yellow luminous in the sunshine. Tomatoes are ripening beautifully this year, unlike last when I harvested nearly all of them too green for anything but frying or pickling. The lavender has been cut and is drying in hanging bunches. The hens are laying fewer eggs now, getting ready for their molt when the old worn feathers of the past season are replaced with sleek new ones. The yellow jackets are out in aggressive full force gathering the sugar from fallen fruit to take back to their nests in the abandoned gopher holes of the grasslands. (I read recently that they will forage a full one thousand feet away from their home.) My sweet basil bed is beginning to wither, time to harvest and freeze it for pesto. The 'naked ladies' amaryllis are nearly finished for the year with their deep pink blooms shriveling in the sunshine. The golden crowned sparrow is singing in the garden thickets.
Three large family reunions and a wedding have come and gone from the Schoolhouse Compound in August. Three weddings are yet to come. The bocce ball court got so much use it needs more crushed granite. Asiatic lilies were woven into the branches of the plum trees on the ceremony lawn. The bread oven in the garden made more pizza. The fire pit got hauled out for some'mores and wood fires to warm wedding celebrants in little evening dresses and bare legs. Chocolate wedding cake frosted parts of the garden patio and gardenias floated in my pond for this past week. Celebration. What a wonderful thing.
Further afield, the brown pelicans are getting ready to celebrate the winter herring run in Bolinas lagoon, soaring in formation over the water. As the coastal pacific waters continue to warm, great white shark sightings will begin in the surf off of Stinson Beach. Tomales Bay waters are as warm and inviting to swimmers in September as they will ever be. Some nights the coves of the bay will be laced with the magic of bioluminescence, giving everyone the chance to play Tinkerbell as the water surface leaves a trail of sparkles when disturbed. The harvest moon is on its way, marking the real turn of the seasons for me. When the hunter's moon of October is here, I know we are well into fall.
|
