October's Roses

When I was about 20, I wrote song called "Roses in October". I was living in California, and one evening I was out walking my dog, feeling blue about some lover or other, when the scent of roses wafted over me. Being a native of northeastern Ohio, I was first of all amazed at roses blooming in the fall. I was more than six months shy of my 21st birthday, and the smell changed my blue mood to pink in an instant.

Roses in October make the air smell so sweet,
And I was feelin' sad, but now the rose is in the air,
And I don't feel so bad...

Now I'm older, and presumably wiser. I live in Nebraska, land of scorching hot summers, and frigid, snowless winters. Today, October 9th, I have two rose bushes in my front yard with multiple fragrant blooms.

I also have peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes in my back garden. There are numerous purple blossoms on the eggplants. At the big box store where I work, you can buy one eggplant for $1.99; I am giving them away to my neighbor and my mother-in-law, and looking up recipes for Baba Ghanoush. Look at all those eggplants! And I have three more just like it. Yippee!




Today, it is a beautiful October day. Eighty degrees, sunny and not humid. The trees are starting to turn yellow and gold. In my back yard I have an Ash tree that is starting to turn. I am beginning to embrace the fall, as I do around this time every year. Tomorrow, I will harvest the Stevia to the left of the eggplant in the above picture, and spread it out on the dining room table to dry. Poor Manly Spouse, he gets nervous when I start drying herbs. This year I'll leave the Tarragon and Rosemary, because I still have plenty from last year. I'll have to remember to mention that, so he can breathe a little easier.




I am a long way from that 20 year old girl walking her dog in North Hollywood, but the smell of roses still improves my mood. My mother used to harvest rose hips for jam, but I think I'll leave that for another year. There's only so much the Manly Spouse can take.

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The Fire of September

When I was seventeen I was lucky enough to play the lead (and only) female role in a production of The Fantasticks, at Western Reserve Academy, an all boys prep school in Hudson, Ohio.

Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones wrote those beautiful songs and my young voice was suited to most of them. One of my favorite songs from that play is called "Try to Remember", and this time of year I find it running through my head most of the time.

I walk through the garden on these cool (almost) fall mornings and sing to myself,

Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.

The grass is so green, the tomatoes are bursting, egg plants seem to spring from nowhere













and I start thinking how nice it would be to live back In California, where I wouldn't have to worry about an early frost. With luck, I'll be cooking fresh, home grown veggies for another month.

Once October comes along, with its bursts of yellow and orange and red, I am again in love with Nebraska. Recent conversations with other Nebraskans confirm that the best times to live here are May/June and September/October. The rest of the time it's either too hot or too cold. But that's another blog completely. This time of year, around the autumnal equinox, before the burst of color arrives, I grieve for summer.

The song ends with,

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
The fire of September, that made us mellow

Tomorrow, when fall begins, I'll still long for June. But October is just around the corner.

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