We finally got a bit of rain on Sunday night. We really needed it. I heard on NPR that we were at a red flag warning for potential fire risk. One thing I find unpleasant this time of year is the fact that the sun is so low in the sky. It always seems to be in our eyes. Driving takes some concentration, especially in the afternoon.

Every year in the fall, I notice an inordinate amount of birds hanging around the Vineyard Haven Post Office—mostly crows. I wonder if the Stop and Shop or Cumberland Farms has some yummy dumpster contents?

There are still some decent looking flowers in the beds. I tucked a gazenia into my hair the other morning. In the evening, I put it into a vase and it still is perky after three days. I’m rarely perky by a single days’ end.

A week ago I seeded some lettuce, spinach and peas for shoots in the open ground. They have all come up. I may transplant the lettuce and spinach into the hoop house for some winter greens. The hoop house is ridiculously dry. I’ve been watering it every couple of days, but it’s still powder right under the surface. That’s what over 100 degrees and no water all summer does.

I saw a lone flower on the totally bare quince. How does that happen? Like forsythia it blooms in spring, but failed to look at the calendar?

Now is the time to lift dahlias. In my perfect world, in which I do not live, I would have labeled them as to size and color before they froze. Nonetheless, they come back every year in stunning displays. I store them in slightly damp peat moss in an unheated back room. In the last decade or so, I have had them come back in open ground if they were neglected during the Big Dig. Over winters are simply not as frigid as they used to be!

Now that cutting back in the beds has begun, a good amount of weeding is to be done. It seems wrong that they continue to grow but here we are. I confess that I rarely removed leaves and debris on my own gardens until spring.

I like to say it’s my high-minded sense of regenerative principles, but it’s just plain weariness. I’ve often said, as a garden worker for others, I have the cobbler’s children’s feet.

I am still saddened by the election results—it’s difficult to remain optimistic. I’m especially annoyed at the so-called autopsy of the Harris Campaign. Some democrats and independent senators from Vermont are blaming and criticizing non-stop. People, it’s not helping.

The misinformation and/or willful ignorance of actual policies is a serious problem. I read that the number one Google search the day after the election was about tariffs. If folks think that the cost of goods was high under Biden, wait until more rich people get big tax breaks and us regular consumers pay more for everything we purchase. I wonder how DJT convinced so many that China would pay? Don’t even get me started about what mass deportation will cost the economy.

I read a lengthy article in the Atlantic about migrants crossing the Darien Gap between Columbia and Panama. Aside from being heart-breaking, it showed what people, hopeful for a better life, will endure,. Too bad the “so-called” Christians forgot Jesus’s words in Matthew 25 about welcoming the stranger.