(Here's a memory blog by former WWK blogger Gloria Alden--enjoy!)
I
Love October
October
The month is amber
gold and brown
blue ghosts of smoke
float
through the town.
Great Vs of geese
honk over head
and maples turn
a
fiery red.
Frost bites the lawn
the stars are slits
in a black cat’s eye
before
she spits.
At last small witches, goblins,
hags
and pirates armed with paper bags,
their costumes hinged on safety
pins.
go haunt a night of pumpkin grins.
- John Updike
Every
three or four weeks while teaching third grade, I posted a poem pertaining to
the season or some unit we were studying for my students to memorize. The above
poem was one of their and my favorites.
In
spite of the fact that my eighteen-year-old son and my six-year-old granddaughter
both died in October, I still love October in N.E. Ohio. It makes me think of
the Dylan Thomas poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should
burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Yes, Dylan wrote it during the final
illness of his father, but I see October as making a last brave stand against
the closing of the year by going out in a blaze of glory. At least that’s true
here in the north.
Everywhere
I look this time of the year the colors are rich and vibrant. At the beginning
of the month the fields were filled with goldenrod and purple asters. Soon the
leaves started to turn to orange, red, amber, gold, purple and burnt umber.
Orange pumpkins like round globes appeared at roadside stands, farmers’ markets,
and in stores. Corn stalks are gathered for decorations. Even the sky seems a
more vivid blue.
 |
| Maggie likes the cooler days, too. |
I
love the crisp autumn days with cold nights and cool mornings often warming up
later in the day. And then there’s Indian summer giving me that last bit of
time when I can try to finish up all those chores that should have been done by
now, but I didn’t quite get around to. Now I can’t procrastinate any longer. My
time is running out. Not only do I need to finish planting the rest of my
exuberant purchases at my favorite garden centers from last spring, but there
are large clumps of daylilies that should be divided and replanted, and
daffodil bulbs I dug up last spring when they were done blooming because I
needed room for something else. Of course, before that can be done, I need to
prepare a place for those plants to go. All the cannas and dahlias need to be
dug up, stalks and leaves removed, and the roots and rhizomes cleaned, dried
and packed in dried leaves or wood chips and taken to the basement for the
winter. The vegetable garden needs to be stripped of dying vegetation and
bedded down for the winter.
 |
| My great-granddaughter playing in the leaves. |
Fortunately
I like to rake leaves even though it does get tiring when you have as many as I
do. The armfuls of leaves I fill my wheelbarrow with are fluffy light reminding
me of those long ago days of jumping in piles of them. What fun that was. Now
I’m too old. It would take a very big pile to cushion my fall. I consider
raking leaves my workout since I don’t go to a gym, nor do I have any exercise equipment
in my home. When the leaves have dried enough, I’ll mow through them to chop
them up, and then use them to mulch my gardens. I also have a lot of pine
needles in some areas. Those I save to mulch my blueberry patch or woodland
gardens.
 |
| Maggie is waiting for me at one of her treat stops. |
One
of my favorite activities in the fall is my morning walk through the woods with
Maggie. I enjoy the rustling sound of leaves as I walk through them, and the
smell that’s unique to fallen leaves, a mixture of a pungent earthy scent with
a touch of sweetness, too. A question that I always have in the fall is how did
Native Americans move silently through the woods when hunting? I can even hear
my soft pawed dog moving. When I was still teaching, I gathered leaves on that
walk and dried them between the pages of books to prepare them for art projects
for my students. I’m still tempted to do that because the forest floor is a
mosaic of jewel like leaves that all too soon will lose their colors and turn
brown.
October
also brings Halloween. It’s a fun holiday where kids and adults can dress up,
play games and get treats, too. It’s a time of ghosts, skeletons, ghouls and
other things that go bump in the night, but also princesses, football players,
scarecrows and less fearsome trick or treaters.
I enjoy seeing the Halloween decorations many people decorate their
homes or yards with. Some people believe Halloween promotes witchcraft and
evil. I don’t think that’s any truer than mystery writers, readers or movie
viewers are more prone to murder. Halloween dispels fear of the boogey man.
Once a child dons a costume and sees other children doing the same, no matter how
gruesome the costume, the child begins to put many fears aside. Back before
Halloween parties and parades were discontinued in schools, my students, fellow
teachers and I had so much fun on that day and in the preparations that led up
to it. I think Halloween is a fitting end for October.
What
do you like about the month of October?
How
do you feel about Halloween?
