The weather has been warm and dry so far.

Summer lingered on, letting the trees at the window keep their leaves in the sunshine.

The season stayed on hold, long past its usual arrival on the calendar. The rain set in just yesterday, so now is a good time to walk out and capture the day.

This tangled critter with spun glass hair is the last of a smoke tree flower.

This dahlia is big as a dinner plate.

This trunk slice is still fragrant. Each of those holes is so large, I can feel inside them with my fingers. Who did all this work? One of our Pileated Woodpeckers?

The cedars have set out a new little cornrow of cones.

Windfall apples are gone, with dozens stockpiled in the fridge. But the quince trees are still full of fruit; they’re flavorful and fragrant and not found in the stores, and I like their soft fuss and weighty heft.

A few weeks ago, one clever homeowner drove a van under his quince tree and stood on the roof filling up buckets, picking off fruit before it fell and hit the ground. The trees are tall and the fruits are heavy, so in other yards when the quince fruits hit the ground they smash half in and they spoil right away. Today I picked up a dozen of these.

At this time of year, even the soundest of these windfall fruit with the most lustrous peel had only a few spoonfuls of good yield. It’s all stewed and sauced now.

Here’s a wee pomegranate.

And wee persimmons. Other persimmons fell all over the ground still green, where they’re a hard slippery picturesque trip & fall hazard.

Strawberry tree, with soft fuzzy-nubbly fruit. When they’re ripe and washed and cooked down and then filtered a couple dozen times to strain out the sand-like seeds, they yield a peachy nectar.

Fancy fuchsias:

In our wacky microclimate, nothing spells “Autumn” like crisp red maple leaves falling on the prickly pear cacti.

Some sources say this is Kahili Ginger:

And… some kind of amaranth in fuzzy pajamas? The phone app called it “Love Lies Bleeding.”

Dusk fell on the autumn day, calling to mind the rhythm and mood of some gentle verse from 40 years ago, about an autumn town. What was that? Which language? It took a while, walking along through fallen leaves, searching in memory. Ah, it was in Polish! Our Polish teacher taught it to us in class, she recited the verses in such a loving way. She was young and beautiful, and while teaching us she grew ill and was diagnosed too late for any treatment. She wanted to leave behind something lovely, something we could carry on with us into our lives. Remembering the sound of her voice, I finally remembered the town name: Mittelbergheim.

At home I ran to look it up, and sure enough: “Mittelbergheim,” by Czesław Miłosz. Here’s the ending, translated in English:

Fire, power, might, you who hold me
In the palm of your hand whose furrows
Are like immense gorges combed
By southern wind. You who grant certainty
In the hour of fear, in the week of doubt,
It is too early, let the wine mature,
Let the travelers sleep in Mittelbergheim.