“September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.”
Earl was a blustery tropical storm bringing a deluge of rain by the time it hit Cape Cod. The wind blew but not even the bird feeders were tossed from the trees. I stood for a while at the front door and watched the storm. The rain fell in sheets, and I could feel the spray from drops pounding the front steps. Gracie chose to forego her last outside visit. She got to the door, poked her head out and backtracked into the house. I am glad there was no damage, and everyone is safe, but I do admit I was looking forward just a bit to all that wind.
Today is a delight. The sun is shining, and a cool breeze has replaced the humidity of the last few days. The tourists who hunkered down will have plenty of beach time today and tomorrow. It’s their reward for staying. On Monday, the line to cross the bridge will stretch for miles.
School starts here on Tuesday. It is the seventh school year without me, and I couldn’t be more delighted. The best Cape weather is during September and October, and I never miss it anymore. The changing seasons happen before my eyes, and I get a front row seat. I used to watch through the windows.
I never thought the Cape had fall foliage until I came home from Ghana. It was then I noticed for the first time the colors unfolding and how uniquely beautiful they are on Cape Cod. The deep blue autumn sky and the crested waves of the ocean seem to frame all the colors. The marshes are filled with tall tan grasses and the same color grasses mix with green ones to border the dunes. The maple trees are usually the first to change color. Their leaves turn red. The oak tree leaves turn yellow, and they are everywhere. The cranberry bogs become a deeper and deeper red as they fill with berries. Along the dirt roads near the shore, the last of the ripe beach plums turn purple. Poison ivy is a brilliant red.
Fall on Cape Cod is my favorite season, and I am impatiently waiting.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: autumn, cape cod, end of earl, fall colors
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September 4, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Hi, Kat
Absolutely beautiful descriptive writing. I love September, and I’m sure Cape Cod is beautiful at this time of the year. Thanks again, and ttu soon…P
September 4, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Thanks, P
Today was the most perfect day, cool and lovely. I agree about September. It has enough of summer to keep it warm and a bit of fall to add some crispness to the air.
September 4, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Thoreau shared similar sentiments:
Before sunset, having already seen the mackerel fleet returning into the Bay, we left the sea-shore on the north of Provincetown, and made our way across the Desert to the eastern extremity of the town. From the first high sand-hill, covered with beach-grass and bushes to its top, on the edge of the desert, we overlooked the shrubby hill and swamp country which surrounds Provincetown on the north, and protects it, in some measure, from the invading sand. Notwithstanding the universal barrenness, and the contiguity of the desert, I never saw an autumnal landscape so beautifully painted as this was.
It was like the richest rug imaginable spread over an uneven surface; no damask nor velvet, nor Tyrian dye or stuffs, nor the work of any loom, could ever match it. There was the incredibly bright red of the Huckleberry, and the reddish brown of the Bayberry, mingled with the bright and living green of small Pitch-Pines, and also the duller green of the Bayberry, Boxberry, and Plum, the yellowish green of the Shrub Oaks, and the various golden and yellow and fawn colored tints of the Birch and Maple and Aspen, — each making its own figure, and, in the midst, the few yellow sand-slides on the sides of the hills looked like the white floor seen through rents in the rug.
Coming from the country as I did, and many autumnal woods as I had seen, this was perhaps the most novel and remarkable sight that I saw on the Cape. Probably the brightness of the tints was enhanced by contrast with the sand which surrounded this track. This was a part of the furniture of Cape Cod. We had for days walked up the long and bleak piazza which runs along her Atlantic side, then over the sanded floor of her halls, and now we were being introduced into her boudoir. The hundred white sails crowding round Long Point into Provincetown Harbor, seen over the painted hills in front, looked like toy ships upon a mantle-piece.
The peculiarity of this autumnal landscape consisted in the lowness and thickness of the shrubbery, no less than in the brightness of the tints. It was like a thick stuff of worsted or a fleece, and looked as if a giant could take it up by the hem, or rather the tasselled fringe which trailed out on the sand, and shake it, though it needed not to be shaken. But no doubt the dust would fly in that case, for not a little has accumulated underneath it. Was it not such an autumnal landscape as this which suggested our high-colored rugs and carpets? Hereafter when I look on a richer rug than usual, and study its figures, I shall think, there are the huckleberry hills, and there the denser swamps of boxberry and blueberry: there the shrub oak patches and the bayberries, there the maples and the birches and the pines. What other dyes are to be compared to these? They were warmer colors than I had associated with the New England coast.
September 4, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Thanks, Wolf, that was perfectly beautiful.
It has been a long time since I last read Cape Cod, and, after reading this, I think it’s time to read again. He describes so perfectly the Cape in fall when the colors are so rich and deep
I like that Thoreau and I both found it so unexpected.
September 4, 2010 at 6:55 pm
I saw where the wind dropped past NC to more like a Tropical Storm and it was wide, going out of control. I think Earl did make Canada or will. You were lucky. We always get direct hits here. No fun at all. Glad you’re safe.
September 4, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Thanks, Z&Me
I too am glad we’re all safe. At least now the deck is all ready for winter.
September 6, 2010 at 6:22 am
It was 7 years ago that I was pensioned off at the tender age op 56. Although I had feared that moment I soon found out that is not so hard to live without working days of 10 hours or more.
Just like you I finally had the opportunity to experience the seasons instead of just glimpsing them in the weekends, when I usually thought to have better things to do than being out and undergo the conditions.
Now I have my rituals, boring to others, but nice for me, starting with breakfast, then some papers or a book. A puzzle will do as well. Then I climb the stairs and read coffee and other blogs plus some other stuff.
Then lunch at varying places, always outdoors, followed by an hours walk.
It’s a good life.
September 6, 2010 at 10:51 am
Bert,
I pensioned off at the age of 57 and worried for a bit, but you are so right: it’s a good life. Your morning ritual and mine are so very similar. This time of year it’s the deck for my morning papers and coffee then inside to write then back to the deck for the afternoon and a good book.
I have found all the small pieces of life again, the ones I didn’t have time to see when I was working. I take joy in simple things and am so content I can barely describe it.