![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/buckling.jpg\" "\\"buckling\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI brought in the aloe plants.\u00a0 Which had flourished so much over the summer…..<\/p>\n
….that there were tons of aloe babies to share.<\/p>\n And then I figured the rest of the work could wait until Sunday.\u00a0 But by Saturday afternoon the\u00a0temperature was dropping even quicker than\u00a0the sun.\u00a0 And by the time\u00a0dinner was over,\u00a0I knew it was time to recheck the weather channel.\u00a0 Which was calling for frost.\u00a0 By Saturday night, not Sunday night.<\/p>\n So\u00a0The Other Half and I made our annual,\u00a0last minute, frantic\u00a0trek in the darkness—-down to the garden, around the\u00a0barn, into the woodshed.\u00a0\u00a0Impossible to say how many years Jack Frost\u00a0has watched us rushing through the dark, shivering in summer clothes, gathering what can’t be protected, covering what we hope to save.\u00a0 The Other Half emptied the\u00a0plastic waterers that risked a rupture if they froze and expanded.\u00a0\u00a0 I started laying\u00a0row covers over the lettuce, unscrewed the hose, picked tomatoes and eggplants.\u00a0 We met\u00a0by the peppers and I lifted branches and plucked the last of the summer’s crop while The Other Half\u00a0held the flashlight in one hand and\u00a0folded hot peppers into his shirt with the other.<\/p>\n I deposited the crops safely in the kitchen….<\/p>\n ….and made a tomato dinner salad for dinner.\u00a0 Because it may be the last time we see the rich red of garden grown tomatoes for a long time.<\/p>\n The Other Half left\u00a0to pick up Middle\u00a0from a bonfire and get Big from work.\u00a0\u00a0 Pretty and her friend carved pumpkins on the deck….<\/p>\n ….and experimented with pumpkin seed recipes in the kitchen.<\/p>\n As I crunched through the first of the fallen leaves in my flip flops, with my barn coat pulled on over my shorts and t-shirt, I was struck by the familiarity of it all.\u00a0 That strange mixture of surprise and relief that always seems to accompany the first frost.\u00a0 The end of summer’s burning heat, the beginning of winter’s bite.\u00a0 A\u00a0reminder that\u00a0we are still tied to the Earth’s\u00a0revolutions,\u00a0that\u00a0years may pass, things may change,\u00a0but we are always bound to return to\u00a0seasons where\u00a0we have been before.<\/p>\n In the kidding barn, I cuddled Allie’s babies—-1 doeling and 1 buckling, miniature versions of their mother with frosted ears and glossy black coats sprinkled with moonspots.\u00a0 These are the last goat kids that will be born here for awhile, but who can say if they will be the final ones?<\/p>\n Carmen bleated softly outside the door.\u00a0 She lost her buckling a few days earlier.\u00a0 Pretty found him, still in the amniotic sac, warm but not breathing, when she went to the barn chores last week.\u00a0\u00a0All this, too, is familiar.\u00a0\u00a0Vigorous new life alongside\u00a0silent inexplicable death.\u00a0\u00a0As mundane in the barn as the scent of hay\u00a0or wisps of cobwebs in the corners.<\/p>\n Fall may seem like a season of\u00a0endings.\u00a0 The foliage wilted, the flowers desiccated, offering up their seed heads\u00a0to the wind.<\/p>\n The pond shockingly silent with the raucous nighttime chorus done for the year.\u00a0 The\u00a0frogs and peepers huddled quietly under every stone or\u00a0forgotten plank of wood in the barnyard, preparing for winter.<\/p>\n There’s no doubt we are living on the edges now, the border country—-evidence of winter’s decay amid a last burst of summer’s brilliance.<\/p>\n But, oh, doesn’t the chill in the air also hint at sweet, sweet rest?\u00a0 Nothing but the hardiest of crops—spinach, chard, broccoli, collards—-creeping along all by themselves, sweeter with every frost.<\/p>\n This year’s gourds waiting patiently for a season of frost and cold to harden into next year’s birdhouse projects.<\/p>\n The chores limited to some trees and bushes to prune or transplant (Why in the world did I plant a rose bush to be choked out between miscanthus grass?)….<\/p>\n ….but 4 months of cool days to dig and no fear of snakes or yellow jackets when hauling brush.<\/p>\n Early nights, walking back to the house from the barn with nothing but the inky black sky and the whisper of leaves dropping, dropping….<\/p>\n The warmth of the woodstove waiting.<\/p>\n The glow of lights from the deck.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n