Before the First Frost

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Good early evening all,

The weather forecast is for our first frost of the season but that is a little uncertain. When it does occur there is a drastic alteration in some of the plant life. I ran out with my new camera to capture our own local scene before the decisive event. The pink dahlias will suffer, wilt, and blacken. My patch of dahlias have produced a continuing blaze of colorful blossoms since the spring. These plants are native to the deep south and would not survive here without loving help. Sometime this month I will repeat my annual ritual to preserve their beauty for another season. I dig up the tubers, discard the leaves and spent flowers, and put each tuber to sleep in a covering of peat moss in a cardboard box. The boxes are put in the garage where there is never a full freeze. In the spring just after Mother's day I will pull the tubers briefly into the daylight and then bury them in the garden for another satisfying season. Some years ago I had dahlias in a variety of colors but I have observed my own mini-evolutionary event. Each spring some of the tubers do not survive the overwintering. Among the survivors I select the largest with the most numerous little shoots and divide these. This selection pressure has now resulted in the survival of almost exclusive pink dahlias you see pictured here. The next picture shows one of my chrysanthemums, a bit bedraggled from recent wind and rain but doing its best to satisfy me. The photo also illustrates my limited camera skills as I have no idea why some images are blurry and others wonderfully sharp. In the final photo of the trio, the young dogwood is displaying its scarlet statement which it assumed after its initial russet. Bernice is pleasured by this foliage which she can see while sitting in her recliner in her bedroom. This is its final color change and this is the color that will briefly adorn our grounds until our fallen leaves are gathered for recycling.

Today Bernice and I went to our Waldbaum supermarket for a big shop. This was another step towards normalization for Bernice. Bernice took her wheelie and it proved to be an indispensable accompaniment for she could use it to move about, stand and examine goods, and to sit on it for occasional rests. It also represented a welcome change to have Bernice give me shopping directions instead of from one of her lists. While we were in the shopping center we decided to get something to bring home for lunch and ended up at the bagel store buying chopped whitefish on a seeded bagel for each of us. Today's bagels have grown so oversized, unlike the sensible bagels of our youth, that we could only eat a half each. The outing really tired Bernice and reduced her energy to complete planned literary tasks.

In the morning Bill the PT person came for his penultimate visit and, always pushing Bernice to the next level, suggested taking their walk sans cane. Bernice, at first flabbergasted at the suggestion, complied and was very pleased when she was able to walk unaided around the block. Bill says that her best exercise is walking but advises that she should use the cane where there may be other people or the terrain is uneven.

The progress Bernice is making in the physical realm is heartening and this is largely a recovery from her terrible fall and the subsequent brain surgery but increasingly she must contend with the symptoms of her underlying blood condition. That is another battle to be won.

A good night to all,
Merwin