Have you noticed things are a little different in the natural world? I imagine we are still polluting as badly as ever even though many of us are in lockdown. But things are different. My garden responded differently this year. It was more difficult to make things grow. The rabbits and squirrels seemed to take great delight in eating new sprouts of beets, sunflowers, watermelons. Caterpillars ate the leaves off many of my tomatoes. When we first moved here, I’d plant a seed in the hard soil and poof I’d have an eight foot tall sunflower. I planted hundreds of seeds this summer and got a few sunflowers. I had planted many things behind chicken wire–no match for any wildlife it seems.
The rhythm was different. It still is. And now the fall is here and it seems the leaves are taking such a long leisurely time to change. I don’t mind. I have taken billions of photos as a result. There is something about those colours that not only moves me, but, from time to time takes me back to the Ottawa valley in the fall. The desolation in the cold clear sky to the northeast. The warmth in our home. The rapid switch over to winter. Wondering if there would be snow on Hallowe’en.
Yes, the leaves are still putting on a show, though many have fallen. And now we have large mushrooms where there were none before. It is indeed an odd time. Nature seems to be noticing our predicament and responding, well of course it is. Nature is far more sensitive than I can ever hope to be. I’m sure I have my patterns, my response, my escape hatches, my adaptabilities. There seems to be a great knowing that takes place out there in the trees, everywhere in fact, but not in my brain, where I spend so much time trying to figure it all out.
Andrew Binks 