First Rain

   

            We knew that the seasonal shift was coming. Rain on Sunday. All across the state, people have been hoping for the change; the wildfire season has been bad this year. Fires. Smoke. Blocked roads. We need some dampness.

                On Friday, we dug the potatoes from both beds. I’ve been letting them dry down for several weeks so that they would store better, but it was time. We pulled 94 pounds in about an hour, then cleaned up the Three Sisters bed as well. I harvested a big vase of sunflowers that had volunteered on the potato plot. After dinner, I picked a basket of figs from the tree and set up the drier. The air was dry and clear, a perfect golden afternoon.

  

              Saturday was partly cloudy, a soft grey gold morning. Mark cleaned up the space under the stairs where we store our potatoes while I cleaned the kitchen, harvested a basket of tomatoes, and cooked them down to sauce. I watched the bees work the goldenrod and apple mint, bringing in flashes of deep orange and bright white pollen to the hive.   In the afternoon, we shifted fences and brought the coop onto the Three Sisters bed, where the chickens rustled joyously in the corn stalks until bedtime.  We brought the lamp in from the outside dining table before we went to sleep.

                This morning, the world had changed. The sky was soft grey with layers of clouds. We went hiking at the wildlife refuge and stopped half way around to pull on rain coats. The light in the woods was dim, filtered both by clouds and by leaves. Back at home, we hauled in the things we do not want to get wet—the hammock, some plants for my classroom that I had just repotted, the tablecloth and pillows—and settled into the dining room. Do you want a fire? Mark asked. Yes, I did. And here we sit, with fire, tea, cats, and books, watching the rain come down and hoping that it is moving inland, to the forest fires still burning in the Cascades. Maybe we will have baked potatoes for dinner.