autumn

Somehow, it is October. This has really taken me by surprise. Most years, in September, I start getting out to the nature center or on the River Trail to take photos of the early hints of fall color. I get out in my yard and start trimming back spent perennials and vegetable plants. I pull out my warm clothes and closed-toe shoes.

But this September, one of the nicest I can remember weather-wise, was so very, very busy. I don’t quite know why. Perhaps it has to do with our big schedule changes at home with our son in school every day, karate and church stuff three nights a week, Sunday school preparation on Saturdays, research into my next book most nights…the list just seems to go on. Whatever the reason, I didn’t “feel” September this year. I missed it, somehow.

And so it’s October. The chipmunks are constantly chirping, for what reason I cannot tell. We’ve started a quarterly relationship with Terminix to rid our home of the yellow jackets we thought we could trust (who then perniciously invaded the sunroom) and ants and other such things. The bergamont and peonies are coming down with a serious case of powdery mildew. And any remaining tomatoes out there have been thoroughly taste-tested by squirrels, raccoons, and tiny black worms. The honeymoon’s officially over with this year’s garden and it’s time to do some pretty ruthless chopping and bagging.

Our attention is lifted from ground level as we start to notice the trees flirting with colors that have always been there beneath the chlorophyllic green. We buy the first jugs of apple cider. We start contemplating a nice color drive Up North. We remember to bring our camera with us everywhere just in case the mist and the sun should kiss in the morning over drifts of red sumac leaves. (Yes, some of us still use an actual camera rather than a phone.)

And we hope that we won’t miss October. Because this, the most beautiful of months, only comes once a year.

Common Name: Fringed Gentian

Scientific Name: Gentianopsis crinita

Habitat & Range: wet prairies & meadows, along streams and lakes

Bloom Time: late summer & fall

About: I see fringed gentian regularly up at Camp Lake Louise, but I only have pictures of it from odd years because…it’s a biennial! It takes two years to bloom and, like most wildflowers, should not be picked or dug up. Since 2013 is an odd year, I was on the lookout for them on our trip this year, but it’s been a cool summer and the late summer wildflowers were not in bloom yet when we were up there.

In addition, like many other wildflowers, it depends on a mycorrhizal relationship. In other words, it can only grow where certain bacteria or fungi are present in the soil, so if you decide you are the special exception and you’ll just go ahead and take that plant home thank you very much, it won’t grow in your yard anyway, so please leave it be and bring home some nice photos instead.

The fringed gentian has been the subject of some poetry over the years, including

Emily Dickinson

God made a little gentian;
It tried to be a rose
And failed, and all the summer laughed.
But just before the snows
There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill;
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition;
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it.
“Creator! shall I bloom?”

William Cullen Bryant

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven’s own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com’st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue–blue–as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

and Robert Frost

I felt the chill of the meadow underfoot,
But the sun overhead;
And snatches of verse and song of scenes like this
I sung or said.

I skirted the margin alders for miles and miles
In a sweeping line.
The day was the day by every flower that blooms,
But I saw no sign.

Yet further I went to be before the scythe,
For the grass was high;
Till I saw the path where the slender fox had come
And gone panting by.

Then at last and following him I found–
In the very hour
When the color flushed to the petals it must have been–
The far-sought flower.

There stood the purple spires with no breath of air
Nor headlong bee
To disturbe their perfect poise the livelong day
‘Neath the alder tree.

I only knelt and putting the boughs aside
Looked, or at most
Counted them all to the buds in the copse’s depth
That were pale as a ghost.

Then I arose and silently wandered home,
And I for one
Said that the fall might come and whirl of leaves,
For summer was done.

Reference: Wildflowers of Michigan by Stan Tekiela; Adventure Publications, 2000

Erin Bartels

On Garrulous Chipmunks, Belligerent Yellow Jackets, and Other Glories of Fall

Wildflower Wednesday: Fringed Gentian