Apples and the Equinox

Lugnasa (Fall Eve)                                                 Autumn Moon

“O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not,
but sit
Beneath my shady roof, there thou may’st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe;
And all the daughters of the year shall dance,
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers. ”
–   William Blake, To Autumn 

Tomorrow at 9:49 we move into liturgical fall (as opposed to meteorological fall).  I’m partial to the liturgical fall, especially with its astronomical significance.  The sun comes up on the equatorial plane–as projected 93 million miles plus into space of course.  Otherwise, crispy critters.  Full entry tomorrow.

The campaign moves on, annoying me less than many because we cut the cord, or the coaxial, with Comcast and no longer have cable television.  Though we do have a basic component of broadcast channels, we never watch them (they bring down the cost of the broad band service) and thus miss the television political ads.

That does not mean we miss out on television shows altogether though since subscriptions to Netflix streaming and Hulu mean many of them are available to us, just not CBS programs.  BFD.  My current new favorite is Grimm, a weekly tale of a Portland detective’s life as a homicide investigator and a Grimm who has the family vocation of seeing and vanquishing fairy tale creatures and/or learning to live with them.

Kate and I went around the outside this afternoon identifying tasks that need to be done.  What needs pruning, weeding, transplanting.  What we want in next year’s vegetable garden and where to plant it.  Where the iris and the lilies and the tulips I buy will go.  What needs to come out altogether.  The yews out front, for example.  Long past their prime and now tall enough to hide the house.

I harvested the apples off the leaning tree of Zestar.  Boy, are they good.  A light, sweet flavor that seems almost unapple like.  This is the tree that needs shoring up.  Not a hundred percent sure how to do that.  Stakes and wires are one option, but with our sandy soil I’m not confident the stakes will hold at a high enough tension.  May have to support it from the front and hold it in place with stakes.