When the Goldenrod Peaks

Here's what happens every morning on Indigo Hill.  

Curtis and I head out the meadow. Sometimes there is laundry still hanging from the day before, because the rain seems to have quit. I really like the way the colors of my load work with the meadow. Even the red PJ bottoms. I basically wear the same clothes all the time. I have two closets full of nice clothes that never see the light of day, because I don't go anywhere but the grocery store every 7-10 days!

Up close to the house is the prairie bit, visible to the left of the clothesline. There are Maximilian and gray sunflowers growing rampant in there. I was given one Maximilian sunflower many years ago. Not knowing what it really was, other than native, I planted it by the back door. It made clear its plans to grow ten feet high and take over the entire flower bed. Out it went to the prairie meadow, where the bees and butterflies and goldfinches adore it.  When the meadow was disced early this spring, it divided like Medusa's head and now it's everywhere out there. 

The meadow is at absolute peak right now at the end of September. Tall goldenrod is everywhere and it is ablaze with color. 

If you click on the photo below you can see Curtis looking for me out in the meadow. He lost track of me while following a scent. 

It is like a sea of gold out there, the house topping a cresting wave like a red ocean liner.

Leaving the path to wade out into it gets you pantslegs full of beggarticks (Desmodium), those little triangular  green pita pockets full of exasperation.

So I wear shorts, even when it's cold, until those durn things die down, because life's too short and sweet to sit around picking Desmodium off my pants.

My mown paths make green rivers through the gold. I love this time of year because I can finally stop thinking about what needs mowing. Man, I mowed a lot this year! Time for the grass to go to sleep. Time for me and the John Deere to catch a break. That said, I'm headed out now to do a thorough weedwhack of the grounds near the house. No rest for the one-woman band. After that, I've got two dozen Asclepias plants to set out--mostly baby butterfly weeds, plus four big common milkweeds.

I adore the combination of heath aster and goldenrod. Starry night and fireworks!

And when it's fully out, there's nothing like heath aster. I always think what a beautiful bridal bouquet it would make. 

The long view from near the end of the meadow. That clump of red sumac in the middle of the field is where Bill had somebody with a dozer dig a test pit to see if they could hit water. They did, and there's a little imitation pothole there, and winged sumac sprang up because then he couldn't mow there without breaking an axle. He wanted to dig a pond on this dry ridgetop, and I have to say I fought him hard on that one. I knew it would only dry up every summer, probably every spring, and what kind of dang pond would that have been?

The sumac clump lives on, and Bill sleeps near the big pine. Not sure I won that round.

I wasn't quite ready for bright red of winged sumac this morning, but whoomp! there it is.

And the deer thud lightly down the paths. 

When we're done in the meadow, Curtis and I head to the orchard to walk the four parallel mown paths out there. Lately there have been lots of migrants, and Curtis tells me the coyotes are using the paths. His bark is rarely heard, and this is the first time I've heard his Darthy growl. This went on for two minutes. Four barks and rough inhaling growls. HEY YOU GET LOST! hhhhhhhhrrrrr HEY YOU GET LOST!!

I need to set up our second game camera out there and catch some of that action! I keep picking up a lone coyote on the Meadow Cam at all hours of the day. 

Curtis sits beside the Dogwood God, watching and waiting for me. He doesn't stray far when there are coyotes around. 

Good dog, Curtis.

 

Shadowplay

Shadows are so profound on a blue and gold September day that sometimes they're all I see. 

I cast these incredibly long shadows in the morning, and I love to watch me and Chet run across the landscape, all stretched out.  Here, I'm overlaid on dew-wet dogbane, and it looks like I have a terrific idea.

I mess around with some of my photos, trying to bring shapes out of darkness. It's fun.

Chet stands before our favorite rubble pile, now decked out in goldenrod. Mmmm. This would make a cool jigsaw puzzle, no?

The pines etch ink-black silhouettes on the sky.

And always the little auxiliary inkblot to look for, trotting ahead.

The neighbors' Bartlett pear yields honey-sweet fruit, cold from wet September grass. Yes. Thank you. I'll have that for breakfast, beat the deer to it, and feed the cores to the cattle. 

The sun is so low and brilliant in the sky I'm blinded and can't even tell what I'm shooting, but I have a feeling it'll be cool.

And I get an alert sundog and his crazy, inexplicably short-legged Chihuahua shadow. Go figure! 

Always worth pointing the camera toward the sun now and then. You never know what you'll get.

We push on, and I watch our shadows. They make me laugh. I'm glad there's no one around at 7:30 on a Sunday morning to hear me laughing as I clump along with Chet, his toenails clicking and scraping on the asphalt. I would make a lot better time if I had legs like these.

We reach the Shadow barn. Presenting...

The amazing Chet Baker!!

Bill saw this and said, "Don't shoot! It's Bacon!!"

Off we go. I marvel that I got the roofline perfectly lined up in this shot as I ran along. Most of the shots I take on the run are all cockeyed. That's OK. I like them all. 

 Most of my favorite shots are complete accidents anyway. Well, planned accidents. 

Chet's shadow looks like some kind of space bug to me. 

In this one, his form vanishes into the turf edge shadow, and the space bug seems to slide along the asphalt unexplained, unaccompanied. 

At the farm, I find the Concord grapes hanging in the old barn perfectly ripe, waiting for me. I've had my eye on them for several months. Breakfast, Part II. These are so beautiful that I fill myself up on ones I find outside this composition. Chet begs and begs, so I give him one. Grapes aren't good for dogs, but he doesn't know that. 

 Concord grapes perfectly capture the taste, the nostalgia, the wine-sweet loveliness of a September morning.