Margotlog: Late Summer Alley Walk

Margotlog: Late Summer Alley Walk

All things are new and beautiful, depending on the light. Today, at noon, with soft overcast skies, colors along the alleys sing "Zinnia" orange, deep red, magenta, pink. Sturdy and hairy, Zinnias clump, taller than umbrellas in a stand. I pause to inspect bees hovering and pausing in their centers. Frost will darken the flowers, erase their colors, but now, mid-September, I edge away from frost. Zinnias right now are as good as they'll ever get.

Walking is the only way to take nature in; otherwise, it whizzes past in a churning haste. Just now, I caught the oldest cat sipping out of the toilet that somehow was left running. Quick, close the lid.The wind has picked up, fluttering the boughs of ruffled locusts outside my study window. I've come home just in time.

Yet I'm still walking toward the alley, toward the corner house where I used to find an old man outside. His tanned face under crust of bright white hair smiled appreciatively--we had cats in common. I bent to pat his "Blackie" who twined around his legs as I congratulated him on his yard which was, and still is, a model of correctness, unlike mine overshadowed by trees, the boulevard rampant with goldenrod, brown-eyed Susans and something tight and purple in a spire, whose name I can't remember. Anyone who knows is welcome to say so.

The point today is to filch huge raspberries, come to fruition in a second ripening. But the owners have stopped harvesting, leaving canes heavy with fruit. As I pass, my hand reaches out and I unhook a berry from its stem, pop it immediately into my mouth. The warm juice rushes around my teeth and down my tongue. I pop in another, and another. Still walking so I won't be accused of loitering, I eat berries in open air, almost on the run, berries that belong to the warm day and the plant's desire--well they're memorable, maybe because filched, warm, lucious, and huge.

It's been an almost perfect summer, with more than enough rain, and plenty of sunshine. Now as the days shorten, I gather up a bouquet of memories, hoping they'll stay fresh in the dark. Some think we store up summer memories to feed us a long time, akin to a pantry stocked with honey, squash, and other eatables for winter. But somehow it doesn't work that way for me. I need a daily dose of outdoors; otherwise, I'm cranky, dislike the world, wonder what's the point.

So, a hurrah for Laura and Mary, and dog Jack, for baby Carrie when she comes along, and for the most simple yet engaging parents I've ever encountered on the printed page. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about woods and prairie not unlike those here in mid-south Minnesota. We have oak groves, left over surely from pioneer days, huge towering, wide-hearted trees that stud a small pocket park on my way home. Only a few oaks rise in yards on our street; none are left on the boulevards. Each time I pass one, I tip back my head and look up as far as my eyes can see their delicious, quirky branches and lobed leaves, almost like fingers. Who says we aren't all related under the skin?