Signaling That It's Time

The heavy heads of crimson amaranth, sprays of five-foot-tall zinnias, and towering sorghum stalks dominate my home garden right now. The days of multicolored tomatoes lining the windowsill (which we named for Yankees players or Supreme Court justices so that we would have Johnny Damon tomato pie or Sotomayor pizza for dinner) have passed.

The basil stems are thickening, getting woody, signaling it's time for a last batch of pesto. The first of the fall seedlings, the mustard greens, the tatsoi, are clumped together like college kids at a concert. The gold finches and cardinals and mockingbirds flutter from milkweed to pokeweed and back again. And the rays of light lengthen day by day, cascading across my dandelion-speckled lawn, across the lemon balm and mint (which are happy again with the cooler nights), through my kitchen window and across my face as I stand there, chopping or kneading or just gazing mindlessly.

"What are you doing, Mom?" my daughter asked the other day, finding me trance-like at the sink, a leg bent, my head cocked to the side.

I had no answer.

She stood next to me and gazed out, too, seeing what I was seeing, understanding.

It's that time of year when muscadines fall from the trees like that children's book (and soon-to-be-released movie) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. We found some the other day, while riding our bikes home from school (an ongoing challenge each year as my children change schools and the travel patterns present new obstacles--here's a post about it on Sustainable Dunwoody). My younger daughter shook a dangling tree branch and the ripe purple balls of fruit struck our helmets and bounced to the ground like hail, making us laugh, as if we had worn the helmets just for this. Lone children in the back seats of cars rode by, occasionally waving, their faces pressed against the windows to try to figure out what we were doing. (There are only a couple once-in-a-while bike riders and only 12 walkers in a school of 800 students.)

It's that time of year when the leaves of the maple trees that hold my hammock start to turn red and yellow. When the sweet potato vines make a mad dash for the finish line. When children start coming home again with too-heavy backpacks and I once again advocate for daily recess and a school garden and a bike rack, please.

It's that time of year when I stand there with my lantern in the dark of morning waiting for the school bus, gazing at the moon I share with my friends in Australia half a world away. And knowing it is time again to pass them the baton as they welcome spring, and as those of us in the northern hemisphere, once again, dig out our socks.