Six on Saturday

I am joining the Propagator and his merry band of gardeners for another Six.

Dank, dripping, damp. The rain has finally come. On dry days, the temperatures fall. I follow the gradual progression toward winter’s illusion of deadness by watching my plants. The brown edging that has appeared on the banana leaves, a note of melancholy like a black armband. The towering evening primroses whose prolific seed pods have become food for goldfinches. The pale yellow of their feathers picks out the color of the few remaining flowers. And I listen to the rainfall on the roof, the flooding streamwater, the busy preparations of errant squirrels that make their way every year into the attic. I feel my own anxiety: will there be sufficient time, between work and sleep, and sufficient energy and initiative to tuck the remaining native plants into the ground before the frosts become more insistent? Are the exotic plants close enough to huddle into the house’s warmth and avoid the worst of the freezes to come?