Smells of the season

He puko 'a kani 'aina.

A coral reef that grows into an island.

A person beginning in a small way gains steadily

until he becomes firmly established.

-'Olelo No'eau

The smell of apples bubbled in the big stainless pan, cinnamon added just the spice to concoct a smell of harvest. After three years, each year Pete learned a bit more about pruning the apple trees to allow a truly abundant crop of green and crispy apples. We still don't know their names, but it doesn't stop them from being quite delicious. The pan-full of cut and barely peeled apples have cooked down to a thick chunky mass, already tucked into freezer bags we'll eat them soon, and then later in the winter when the limbs and stems of the orchard are bare and bone-like against the cold times. 

An absolutely riotous wall of orange nasturtiums fill in my corner garden. A picture would say it, but, since we have no camera. The words substitute. Living in the eco-system of tall Evergreens, the growing season is late here. Where our neighbors with lots of sun have long ago harvested their beans ours are yet to come. But oh what a comedy of nature we do get to enjoy as the fertile beds and the late summer rains pump their mana into the seeds I planted in May. Along with those giant nasturtiums the happy trails of Scarlet Runner Bean flowers repeat the glow of orange hiding the wire fence, climbing up and beyond the red alder branches and tumble onto poles of bamboo I have installed to catch them. A trellis of palm-sized green leaves and clusters of scarlet flowers are a haven for the hummingbirds. I watch a tiny hummer eat to her heart's content, and then rest on the tip of the branch. I'm not sure, but though nasturtiums are less fragrant than some of the flowers that turn me on my head with their smell, nasturtiums must also be pollen-rich (why else the hummingbirds). My sinuses fill and my ear is plugged for days on end. But. That is what can happen.

Alongside the keyboard my work of writing and creating medicine cards from The Safety Pin Cafe tests my ability to adapt my capacity to use software. The art of making something is still the most joyous of activities, so I persist, and relish in the new season of learning and tinkering; pinning this with that. A riot of growth is still possible, and prevalent in autumn. I love that. Content in my progress, glad to be.