Rushing -----

Rushing - we are now rushing to get ready for the "real fall" which is that brief moment between Indian summer and winter. This time of year we revel in the last flowers of the season. I hate clipping the roses back as long as there is a bud that might get a chance to bloom.

I have a honeysuckle vine which grows on a plastic trellis. It is beautiful all summer long, the humming birds love it and the honey bees come to gather the nectar the birds miss. It became very heavy and in recent windy weather the whole thing collapsed. I bought a package of L-hooks (you cannot buy just one, you know) and screwed it into the fence. I struggled but finally got the whole thing hung back in place. There were still blossoms and the next day the hummingbirds were still visiting. Then, woe is me, the whole thing once again collapsed. I screwed yet another hook into the fence and rehung it. But I saw that it was so lush and heavy it would not stay long if I didn't prune it. As I said, I hate cutting any buds that might get a chance to blossom, so delayed the job.

Yesterday after my son had helped with spreading mulch I decided to tackle the honeysuckle. That vine was so intertwined the task was laughable. I would clip a branch and pull, and finding it firmly wound around another branch, I would clip and pull. And so it went. The pile of branches is still in the yard, the vine is still too heavy. But I punctured my arm with a particularly resistant stem, so being cautious about infection, I aborted the operation. I cleaned the wound (I should give so much blood when at the lab!) and put a "band- aid" on it. Later today on this beautiful almost-fall afternoon, I will go out and gather the branches and consider cutting that vine right off at the ground. It will come up, you know. You cannot kill a honeysuckle.

Further rushing toward "real fall" the road crews are working day and night all over Maine to finish "shovel ready" jobs which are "your tax dollars at work." The tax dollars may be, some of the road crew are leaning on their "ready shovels." The newest befuddling traffic controls are slim sticks that resemble inverted plumbers' helpers. Before actual work sites a row of these little sticks are supposed to tell you where you should be to get to where you want to go. Apparently these are a Maine thing, because several drivers "from away" have had accidents trying to figure out which side of them they should be on. I thought if I stayed in the middle I could make a decision when necessary, and found the middle is where I wasn't supposed to be. But being a native, I wasn't worried. There's more than one way to get most anywhere - if you know your way around.

The kids are back in school. This lessens the amount of traffic involving those amazingly clever youngsters who text, drink soda, drive and chat with their friends all at the same time - in little black cars with seven kids sharing three seat belts. Oh, yes, they do! BUT - now the big yellow school buses are filling up the roads - and they are not rushing. They had schedules to keep but unlike the commercial buses, they take their time, stopping every few hundred feet to pick up a cluster of backpacking babies leaving home for -- a day? What are they carrying in those backpacks? I thought they were going for at least the whole week. I can go to Chicago for a five day convention with a bag not much bigger than those.

Well, rushing on, I have to do some FALL CLEANING.

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many. - Oliver Wendell Holmes