Seasons: She's ready for snowfall, hungry squirrels and Thanksgiving blessings
I have just come in from scattering dozens of unshelled peanuts under the apple tree in our front yard and de-icing the frozen water in the bird feeder. "My" squirrel - the golden brown dude who usually chatters loudly when he's ready for lunch - seemed too chilled even to nag me. Instead, he huddled on his usual tree branch, with his tail furled tightly around him and his dark eyes turned forlornly toward our kitchen window. As soon as he saw me coming with the bag of peanuts, he raced to the bottom of the tree trunk, ready to dine Chez Rozen. While he was gathering the latest haul, I was heating water for the birdbath, which the squirrel shares with the finches that gather at our feeder.
By the time you read this column, the first autumn snowfall was predicted to have whitened the Palouse. Our recent freezing weather has frosted memories of still another glorious Indian summer, now truly gone. At our house, my husband disconnected the outdoor hoses, and I laid towels over the blooming pansies and chrysanthemums in the front-porch planter. The towels couldn't save the little flowers, though. When I uncovered them the next morning, I found them, frozen but still standing upright on their stalks. The days have been too cold to let them thaw yet, so I am thankful for these last colorful petals of autumn.
Before the freeze hit, I remembered to rescue the hollyhock seeds and anemone corms I had gathered at summer's end and stored in our garden shed. Last weekend I brought in the bag of hollyhock stalks and spent nearly three hours freeing the thin, oval-shaped seeds from their pods. The seeds were arranged like tiny, jammed-tight spokes around the hub of each pod. That harvest yielded approximately 17 bazillion hollyhock seeds, which I am storing indoors, in a lidded plastic container, until spring. In May, I will plant them in a nettlesome patch of perennial weeds along the east side of our property. We can't see it from our own windows, but that patch has been an eyesore for our patient neighbors. My husband believes he finally annihilated the weeds permanently this fall, and I plan to fill the space with dozens (millions, maybe) of tall, old-fashioned hollyhocks. Those hardy plants will reseed every year and offer, I hope, joy and color where quack grass once grew.
I will also scatter-plant some hollyhock seeds in my established flower gardens next spring, hoping to see their tall stalks of purple, lemon, peach, pink and deep red rosettes blooming among the delphiniums, roses, Canterbury bells and sweet William. I have enough hollyhock seeds to become a Moscow version of the main character in one of our daughter's favorite books from childhood. Miss Rumphius roamed her seaside village, scattering lupine seeds wherever she walked. Those townspeople loved the bright color the lupines brought, but I have no plans to fill my own pockets with seeds and introduce my hollyhocks into other people's gardens.
And now is not the time to think too long of spring, when I can see the holiday season coming soon. I love Thanksgiving for its nearly pure emphasis on family and taking time to remember the blessings in our lives. Most of the retail world skips over the day's meaning and uses Thanksgiving Day as the diving board into the holiday sales season. So here's an enthusiastic wave of a turkey drumstick to the stores on the Palouse who will shut their doors on Nov. 27 and let their employees be with their families.
Our two adult children have ordered me out of the kitchen for the Thanksgiving Day feast this year. I think - and hope - this is not a permanent banishment to the pasture. Instead, our kids want to give me some extra time to heal from a minor medical procedure next week. Each of them is an excellent cook, and they plan to team up with their own recipes and variations on our traditional holiday dishes. I'll make the pies and then spend the rest of the day reading to and playing with our grandchildren at our daughter's house. (And I hope our kids don't read this, because I admit I'm going to roast a small turkey and make stuffing and cranberry sauce for my husband and me to enjoy during Apple Cup weekend. You can shoo an Italian cook out of your kitchen, but you can't make her stop using her own stove.)
My column will go dormant for a few weeks and then return for a week or two in December. My dearly loved garden staff - Benjamin BadKitten and Rags - and I wish each of you the happiest of Thanksgivings. Thank you for being readers who care about green gardens and creatures furred and feathered.
Sydney Craft Rozen is a Moscow writer who has a sign in her kitchen that reads: "There is always, always, always something to be thankful for." She can be reached at scraftroze@aol.com.
