Ghosts

Raw winds blow the last leaves of summer into corners of the garden, except the rusty few that shiver on oak trees after the first snow.

Golden peppers hang, wrinkled, on blackened plants-harvest cut short by an ill-timed frost. Basil, stunted by unfriendly conditions, is brittle and crumbling. Spent cucumber vines lay in tangled heaps along the fence. Next year, no doubt, I will find young tomato plants sprouting where ripe fruit fell in October’s early chill. Where a bounty lay wasting instead of safely stored in jars on pantry shelves. There is something terribly wrong about a dropped tomato. All that richness, never tasted. A sacrilege of waste.

It was a summer of garden wreckage. Long heat and dry days torched the onions, robbed the vines of riches, flattened young seedlings under a burning sun. Caterpillars bored into all manner of fruits. Illness and exhaustion sapped me, and early spring’s intentions gave way to autumn regrets in the blink of an eye. Not yet tucked in for the long season of cold, the garden still stands, dripping with spoilage, as a stark reminder of all I failed to do.

Now, come the long days of howling winds and chilled, white fingertips. The retreat inside when temperatures dip too low, and twilight falls earlier each day- when darkness seems to grip the whole world. Now is an autumn season for slower things, though summer’s wishes still cling to my heart like the oak leaves on November trees, like ghosts of a life that whisper in the wind.