Autumn Colors in Our Garden

Even though the autumnal equinox is yet a month and more away, it is definitely feeling fallish this morning.  It was still dark when we awoke at our usual 5:30 and a chilly drizzle hurried me out to the chicken coop with the girls’ breakfast.  In the flower beds, the daisies drooped; only the lilies and dahlias looked perky in their ready-for-fall colors.

Once upon a time, a day like this might prompt my mother to say, “How would you like to go shopping for school clothes today?”  Of course, it would have to be a Saturday or, otherwise, she’d be working and I’d be having an inside day with Mrs. Nagle, our best-ever housekeeper/baby-sitter/friend-and-confidant.  Maybe she’d teach me some new embroidery stitches.

Oysterville Kids c. 1944

But, if I was lucky enough to be in Oysterville, a rainy August morning might mean skpping next-door through the raindrops to Judy and Peter’s house.  There was always something going on there at the Heckes House. — Aunt Rye might have cookies in the oven or Glen might have come in from the Oyster beds with one of the Kemmer boys and they’d be teasing us about this or that.   If the Heckes/Kemmer cousins Anne and Nancy Cannon were down from Portland, us kids might sit around the big oak kitchen table and play shoots and ladders until those cookies were ready.

Or, if it was warm enough and only a little bit misty-moisty, we’d go picking blackberries to sell to Klondike Kate who lived on the corner.  She had a red light on her porch but we were too young to know what that was all about and, besides, she was full of stories about when she lived in Alaska.

Klondike Kate’s Place

But wherever I was and whatever I was doing, I remember that those first dark, rainy days toward the end of August meant school wasn’t far off.  I can still feel that shivery anticipation of “the first day back.”  It’s the thing I feel sorriest that kids will miss when virtual school starts this fall.  Heck, they won’t even need to go shopping for school clothes.  And if they are lucky enough to have a Klondike Kate in their neighborhood, visiting isn’t an option.  Bummer!