prickly pear.

currants in a basket

Mid September.  The coyotes are eating prickly pear cactus fruit.  The currants are just about dried up on the bushes, and the grapes are long gone.  Rosehips will sweeten with the first frost.  The fringe of wild sunflowers makes way for purple aster, and the winterfat thickens with downy stems.  The cottonwoods lining the Rio Grande are starting to turn, and a neighbor saw elk tracks in the bosque.  

I wear a big straw sunhat, Maizie dons a purple polka-dotted one, and we pick the last currants from our bushes with the sun on our backs.  Maizie naps and nurses in the mei tai carrier while I pluck each deep aubergine globe of fruit and put them in a basket.  I make one more batch of cream & oat scones with the currants–the currants are even better than blueberries because they hold their ripeness taut through the baking, and almost explode in your mouth. 

Late September.  I can see the horses’ breath this morning–they snort and whinny when they hear me open the front door on my way to feed breakfast to all the “outside animals”–hay for the horses and chicken scratch for the hens.  Ruby and amethyst leaves of sumac adorn the fences.  A chainsaw whirs somewhere down the road; a neighbor is cutting and stacking wood for the winter.  I make my way to the hot tub, coffee in one hand and towel in the other.  As I sink into the water, I can smell our pinyon woodstove fire, and I watch the steam from the hot tub rise up and tangle with the tendrils of smoke. 

We still need to put our wood in; we have a small stack of pinyon left from last winter, but I always feel anxious until the stack towers along the back fenceline, until the haybarn is full for the winter, and until the deep freezer is full of meat. 

rosehips

Early October.  The summer has slipped away with the apples dropping from the neighbor’s trees. We have more horse apples than the horses can eat, and more jugs of applesauce than we have space to freeze.  One of the horses gets sick from too many apples, so they are gifted to the compost pile, and we keep the small hard ones for Maizie to use as teethers.  The first freeze comes, always unexpected even though we know it’s coming.  Maizie and I trade in our big sun hats for warm hats, and we pick rosehips from our bushes, sun on the early snow in the mountains. 

Winter is settling in, slowly and quietly, like sleep.  I love winter–the cozy fires and wool socks and hearty food.  Warm house, cold windows.  Winter-coated kitties in the bed, fat furry horses outside.  I love bundling up to feed the horses, making them warm mash on cold mornings, crystals of ice around their warm, soft noses.  I love the desert cold–bright and prickly.