Autumn Leaves, October Rain, and Nightmares...

Right off the bat let me say that usually our Portland Octobers are pretty nice. The rains don't usually start until toward the end of the month, after which they don't stop until along about April. I italicized rains because rain is a constant fact of life around here for six months of the year, so much so that when the sun comes out people run around in shorts and sit on sidewalks drinking coffee and sunbathe wherever they can find a non-soggy piece of lawn—even if the temps are below freezing.

This October is not nice. We've had enough rain that the leaves on the sidewalks and trails are soggy. No taking a walk in order to kick your way through drifts of crisp, rustling leaves, which I remember as one of the best things about autumn.

Except for once.

I was fifteen and we had recently moved to a middle-sized town in southern Idaho. The library was only a half mile or so from our house, and I made frequent use of it. Even better, it had a good collection of science fiction books, my then-favorite genre.

It was the middle of October and I was taking the long way home from the library because the temperature was mild, the wind was blowing fallen leaves across the streets and sidewalks, and the nearly full moon was playing peek-a-boo behind fast-moving clouds. Although there were streetlights at the intersections, the blocks were long and mostly dark. Deserted. I might have been the only person alive that night.

I am not one who jumps at shadows. I'm more likely to try to discover its source than to be afraid of a strange noise in the night, and ghost stories do not frighten me. About the only things that really scare me are lightning storms and having a tree fall on my house—that's happened twice and folk wisdom says events happen in threes...

One of the books I'd returned to the library that night was John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids. For some reason it had scared me, way more than any of Lovecraft's stories or Poe's or Shirley Jackson's. The triffids were plant creatures that ingested meat. Any kind of meat. And they were prone to making the source of the meat dead before they ate it. When they moved they made a clicking, rustling noise.

Just like those dry leaves rattling across the sidewalk.

I was terrified.

I did not run screaming, but I certainly walked very fast, flinching at every click, knock, bump, thud, rustle, and creak. I was never so glad to see our porch light as I was that night. For weeks afterward, I woke in the night, sure I'd heard a triffid outside my window.

In the many years since then, I've reread that book a couple of times and seen the movies (one true to the story, one not). And I have to admit, triffids still scare me. So maybe it's a good thing our sidewalk leaves here in Portland are soggy.

Digging Up Stuff

I've been moving rocks this past month. Digging them from under iris and rhody roots, unearthing them from under blue fescue gone amok. Making new piles and wondering what to do with them all.

Back when we bought this house, I decided to get rid of the lawn—I have a philosophical prejudice against lawns because they consume fertilizer, water and time and are boring. Shrubs and flowers are prettier, can be way lees work, and are easy to ignore for weeks at a time (mostly...).. So I had the sod removed and hauled away and planted rhododendrons and day lilies and hostas and ferns and two wisteria

(I've already told you how they tricked me—they need monthly pruning, starting right now).

Anyhow, the rocks. My house is on the edge of a "lenticular gravel bar" left by the Missoula Floods that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. Big floods that carved the Columbia Gorge and reshaped the topography of much of eastern Washington and the northern Willamette Valley. Each time I planted one of the twenty-seven rhodies I began with, I dug up rocks. In fact, I couldn't use a shovel to dig with; it took a 1-1/2-inch thick, pointed iron bar, because I was digging in gravel, with a little soil holding it together.

Those rocks, I thought, would make lovely borders for the rhodies, keeping out weeds and saving me having to lay down bark mulch. And they did, until plant debris and ants and other natural processes built up a layer of soil and compost on top of them, making a lovely home for weeds. Now, twenty-odd years later, the rocks are mostly buried. So I'm moving them out, to give the plants' roots more room, because some of my rhodies have died for lack of water—it runs right off the compacted rocks—from overcrowding—I got carried away when I planted them because I forgot that shrubs get bigger—and from several hot summers in a row—a pine tree just outside my lot that shaded three rhodies was cut down and now all three are gone, victims of too much sun.

But about the rocks. It's hard to resist looking at them as I dig them up. I've found granite that had to have come from Montana, piggy-backing on ice floes or tumbling in the floodwaters. Pitted black basalt that probably began its journey in the Columbia Plateau, a shard or two of limestone from somewhere east of here, and even some really pretty, nearly transparent quartz pebbles. Sometimes I wish I knew more geology, so I could know what each rock is and where it probably came from, but mostly I just enjoy knowing they've traveled a long way to end up in my garden.

I've finished planting my vegetables. In addition to all the onion-relatives that have been growing all winter, and the snow peas that are now nearly a foot tall, I have five tomato plants (two cherry, three big ones), and two different kinds of squash. Some nasturtium seeds are in the ground, but I haven't seen any sprouts yet. I hope they do grow. The leaves and flowers are both delicious.

And speaking of delicious, no I haven't forgotten to include a recipe. But this month it's really an ingredient suggestion instead of a full-blown recipe. Pea tips and pea sprouts. I'd heard about them a few years ago, but had never tried them until this spring when my snow peas needed thinning. They're quite tasty in salads, and they are good stir-fried too. So if you have some pea plants you can spare, Google "pea tips" and you'll find a whole bunch of ways you can use them. They may also be available in your local farmers market.

Last but not least, I have a new (short) book out. Common Ground is about an heir to a marquessate, who'd rather dig up old ruins than participate in the ton's social rituals, a young woman whose guardians insist that the study of Roman mosaics is unsuitable for a lady, and a duck-chasing dog whose antics open all sorts of possibilities for two unconventional—and lonely—young people. (ISBN 978-1-60174-214-8, $2.99; now at Amazon and KOBO.

Now, I'm heading out to dig up more rocks.

Jude