It is 6:15 in the morning and the whistle of the Boston trains does not come this way today. I live to the west of the train station, and when the wind comes from the west the sound is carried in the opposite direction.
Projects for today are not made yet. Yesterday, I started clearing the weeds in Cristina’s backyard in Foxboro. I could finish that today. My garden needs to be prepared for winter too.
I remember my father at this time of the year reviewing his garden plans for the following season. “If I am still here next year, I will change this and that…” I have to do that also.
This year the pumpkins invaded the garden and completely dominated it, growing over corn stalks, tomato and pepper plants, eggplants and all the rest. I want to continue cultivating squash, but I need to keep their growth under control.
Squash! I like this word. It is a Native American word and the delicious fruit it names is another American Indian gift to the Europeans who committed the worst atrocities against them. Potatoes, tomatoes, corn were other Native American contribution to the food pantries of the World.
Pumpkin is the other common name for this garden beauty but I prefer to use squash.
The growing season, here in New England is practically over. There are still potatoes and tomatoes to be picked up… and of course the squash. It’s fall the most peaceful, relaxing season of the year. It is a time of completion, integration… The temperature is perfect; the mosquitoes are gone, clear skies…
New England is really beautiful in the fall. Soon the foliage will be in full color and the tourists will swarm in to watch it.
This poem of Robert Frost, besides its ponderings on life and choice, suggests the colorful foliage of the New England fall woods.
The Road not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as long as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
