The faintest golden cast shimmered in the leaves as I drove home from the farmer’s market.  No brilliant yellows yet – except for the acres of soy that, in just a week, have turned as bright as fields as sunflowers.  But it’s there in the green – a hint of warmth that is more than just the glow of sunlight, a rasp of dryness that isn’t about rain.   The trees are quieting the riotous hunger for light, to begin their most important work.  Drawing into themselves all that’s been accomplished in one more year, and letting go.

Here we have apples from the commercial lot a mile up the road (it’s for sale), and grapes from the community garden, where the vines are so thick the clusters are still only half-ripened.  And dahlias and sunflowers from the Hmong grandmother and her granddaughter in Fort Atkinson.  Farmer Peggy’s flowers have finished, replaced with an abundance of russet Asian pears and creamy red Gala apples.  All to be told with another picture on a different day, I hope.

And the willy-nilly cosmos that I can’t shut up about.  The vase stamped Made in Japan, from the 50s or so.  Brought together to make the very thing I never knew I wanted.  Just like falling in love.