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The storm brewing over the northeast represents a surge of milder air that was too little too late. Before it came north to fuel the falling pressures and my aching bones, cold air slid down behind the last storm, and gave us a sneaky freeze.
It was sneaky because their was no frost. The air was bone dry, and just as there is sometimes no dew in a desert, there was no frost on the pumpkins. However everything withered in the first light of dawn, yesterday.
Perhaps the saddest sight was the demise of the morning glories crawling all over the fence beside the main entrance to our Childcare’s front gate. In a desperate attempt to make seeds, (which I had frustrated by “dead-heading” the blooms before they could make seeds), the vines had produced a lovely mass of blooms the morning before. I often teach the children their numbers by counting the blooms, but we didn’t even try yesterday. There were about fifty deep purple blooms. Today there is just black and limp ugliness.
The basil in the herb garden was black and limp as well. As long as it was vivid and green some element of summer survived, as I stooped to pluck a leaf to nibble. Abruptly it is gone. I tried a black leaf, but the taste is distinctly wrong.
Usually their is a splendid frost, when growing ceases, and all the world is shimmering. There was something sinister about how sneaky this cold morning was. The powers of death moved invisibly through the weeds, to the pepper plants protected below, and scythed them down. Everywhere you looked summer was dying, without a frost.
Sunrise's Swansong 