“Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods,/And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.”

— William Allingham

My time in the woods of the Pumpkin Patch have ended; and I have begun my next seasonal job assembling Christmas wreaths in the barn at Pine Brook Hollow.  There is something about doing this work in preparation for Christmas that makes me want to skip right over Thanksgiving and rush headlong into winter; but Mother Nature asserted herself as Queen of Autumn this week and reminded me not to wish away a single moment of the season of changes.

There have been years when the tug-of-war between summer and winter has seen such a chill in the air that we have huddled near a propane heater as we trimmed the evergreen boughs and worked our magic of transforming tree to wreath.  There is a drawer in my dresser that holds the long johns, the under armour, and the well-soiled fleece shirts that never quite lose the scent of pine.  There are wool socks that can be layered on top of my cotton ones to keep my feet from freezing solid as I stand for hours in an open barn.

As my first day approached, I took inventory; and on my way to bed the night before, I laid out all my layers in the order I would need them in the morning.  Imagine my surprise when the fires of Autumn burned with such efficiency that I was able to leave behind the layers and work without a jacket.  My perspective shifted as suddenly as the autumn breeze; and instead of feeling as though winter had come early, I struggled with the idea of preparing for Christmas on an Indian Summer day.  My trips outside to collect the boughs drew me into a world of the slow fire of Autumn.  It scorched the leaves that still clung tenaciously to the nearly-bare trees, and the color of flames licked at the vibrant blue sky of a November day.  As summer tugged harder, we relished the lingering warmth, knowing that soon it would be blown away by the chilly winter wind.

Today the balance has shifted.  I will pull on my many layers and add a stocking cap for good measure.  The embers are dying, and the trees are all but bare.  As I walk from my house, I hear a noisy flock of geese as they point their V toward the south and announce their departure.  Even the birds are leaving.  Soon the slow fire of autumn will consume all the color and leave us only with the memory of another year.  Soon the whole earth will sleep beneath its blanket of winter snow.  I pull on my gloves and take out my pruning shears.  This will be a very good day to assemble a bit of color before December owns the landscape.  When Christmas comes, we will savor the green and remember the summer that Autumn consumed in the midst of the silent winter.