Wild Plums © Marek Kosmal | Dreamstime.com

It is our first really cold day here.  Fingerless glove weather, wrap a scarf around your neck weather.  At the Farmers Market I finally got my knives sharpened, and bought okra, spinach, strawberries, peppers, chili, mushrooms and a pumpkin.  The pumpkin I’m going to try in an Indian dish.  It’s the time of the Nine Day Festival in South India, when doll displays are built, chickpeas and coconut salads made, and women visit one another.  Yesterday I lit the light.

After the market, I went to the store, and on the way back, I noticed that bicyclists don’t stop for stop signs.  Maybe they pause minutely?  What’s more perplexing is that they don’t stop for street lights.  They carefully look both ways and run the red light.

Today, from my window, I can see an apple tree brimming with apples.  Easy to climb as well, and old, for a brick driveway was built around it.  Closer to home is a plum tree, loaded with fruit.

I transplanted a geranium yesterday.  From the soil, out plopped a plum, the work of an industrious squirrel.  I now eye the other plants I brought in, and wonder what surprises they contain.  Now I know the reason a squirrel leaped onto the fence and noisily ate a plum in front of me.

I was away for a couple of weeks during the Late August/Labor , fixed, Day holiday, so I brought down the garden umbrella.  It’s a sad affair, with a broken splints which I tried to reattach vainly with a handmade splint.  Getting caught up with work, I never got around to opening the umbrella and let it sit unbothered in the heat that took its toll on the herbs.

The other day, I decided to open it, but did not get very far, for inside, clinging like–well, insects–were a clog of bees.  About a dozen yellow jackets, climbing over one another, with a few buzzing about, way up near the top of the pole.  I immediately desisted.  Now I had an umbrella about a quarter of a way open.  All day, I kept peering at it, looking at the bees.

I wondered what they were doing, congregating like that?  Yellow jackets, after my internet search, did not make honey, so my first idea was wrong.  Making babies?  Maybe.  I left them alone, and thought I could wait for the frost.  I went back inside, shutting my indoor, wishing I had the screens my landlord promised in June.

I don’t know what made me brave it that evening, but since the bees did not seem that interested in biting me, I cautiously cranked up the umbrella, tilting it to avoid the fence.  Really, the set-up’s comic, and the one who really enjoys the comfy chair underneath is the neighborhood cat, although lately he has not been around.  Now I know why.  So I cranked it up, and left the premises.

Next morning, the bees were gone.  I kept checking back to make sure.  A mutually agreeable eviction.

The mornings have become chilly again, so much so that I lit the oven and baked banana bread. It was as if Mother Nature looked at her calendar, and said, okay, let’s move on.

Jupiter is very big in Eastern shy right now.

The garden got the nod from Mother Nature, too. My herbs have bid adieu, as have many of the flowers getting Northern light. A nasturtium braves it out, as do the geraniums. It’s time to bring in the plants. one great thing is the bees are in good number, buzzing around the dahlias. At the farmer’s market they flew around the sunflowers, and customers bravely bought the bunches, bees and all. Here is a link to a most wonderful video (10 minutes long) on the plight of the honeybees from the ilovepeanutbutter website:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/08/haagen-dazs-mystery-of-the-disappearing-honeybees-documentary.html?ref=se-do4