Dreaming the World

A lovely late October day. The temperature this morning stood near freezing but here, not far from the shore, there was still no frost. Still, Nori the cat wisely thought better of spending much time before the briefly open door or even on the sun porch, which, as it is on the north side of the house (don’t ask), is neither sunny nor warm this time of year. There’s definitely a chill here in the annex, which my small electric heater is struggling to reduce.

Thursday morning brought a dramatic change to the landscape: seemingly overnight we had clearly passed peak, even here at the shore. While the trees mostly retain their leaves, the colours are heavily tilted towards muted yellow. Still, here and there remain areas of vibrant foliage.

A bit further inland many trees are now bare, which accentuates the colours on those that have so far retained their leaves. The oaks, always the last to turn, are mostly greenish, although a few have put on their characteristic rich reds, maroons, and browns. As we move into November the maples and their ilk will drop their remaining leaves, giving the landscape an open, barren look, broken only by clumps of browning oaks.

Yesterday we paid a last visit to one of our favourite farm stands. The shop lives in tiny Little Compton, a village a twenty minutes drive west from here. It closes for the winter after next weekend but this was our last opportunity to drop by. Apparently a host of others had the same idea, as the small parking lot was literally jammed with vehicles and we had to negotiate with two other drivers just to create a clearing to leave.

We bought a few vegetables and an apple pie. Earlier in the summer we had purchased a peach pie that surpassed delicious so we had high hopes for our purchase. Whether due to our heightened expectations, a different baker, or simply, the lack of peaches, the pie, which we had for breakfast this morning, was more than a tad disappointing. The filling was near perfect but it was overwhelmed by way too much crust.

Our excursion yesterday took us past an enormous flock of Canada Geese and assorted small ducks that had assembled on one of our local rivers, a couple of miles up river from the mouth. It was by far the largest flock I have seen here, and Jennie surmised, most likely correctly, that we were viewing migrators. We have large numbers of geese that overwinter here, but these birds had the look of travellers stopping to eat and rest.

Curiously, there were far fewer birds on our local river and bay, which got me to wondering why that was. I seldom see migrating shore birds, ducks, or geese in any numbers here, although we have a significant flock of geese that live in the bay year round. I know that migrating song birds and raptors are much more common a few miles inland to the west, which leaves me to imagine that migration routes might be the answer to the puzzle.