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About mid-fall, color peaks precisely when witches and black cats and bats hallow the halls of department mega-malls and pharmacies. The brightest of nature’s hues turn in the direction of the coming neutrals as though Halloween’s witches have succeeded in their chants and poison poxes.
Even the air takes on the spine chill of Hansel, swooped upon by the flittering bats of Witch Hazel. Schoolrooms have tried to lighten the holiday by converting the ghastliness to “harvest celebrations.” But the darkness increases and the autumn chill is named as a peculiar event—if it happens at all. Indian summer, lost as fast as a leaf falls, is but a tease and reminder of what was and now must go.
My mind wanders to warmer days of late summer when yellow sunflowers bloomed from fallen feeder seed. Brain cells recall summer’s end with a bed of black-eyed Susan as thick as the taller yellow yarrow layer. Patio pots cascading to the slab in pink, lavender, white, purple, and magenta had yet to consider seed pods over blossom. Trumpets of variegated color created by mingled vines of honeysuckle and morning glory rang their dinner bells calling to hummingbirds.
Alas, the ruby-throated hummers too have been witched away. That’s a sure sign that Angelkeep autumn is counting down.
With a shiver, I note that the oaks that are usually first to change, have lost the red color. Leaves clinging to limbs take on the acorn neutral look. Cottonwood yellow and maples too have fallen to their mulch vocation.
It appears only the evergreens defy the season of color change. Oh, and the cardinals. The firebirds glow against the darker backgrounds.
This fall the male red birds are in abundance. In late summer and early fall, when school resumed, when billows of fall clematis perfumed the air, the juvenile cardinals fed at the Angelkeep birdseed feeders.
Their coats first begin neutral, and then through a splotchy process evolve into cherry red, slower than the trees that make their hastier color change. As a male cardinal’s feathers adjust to the adult red, Gwen and I feel compassion for their attire. They look like they wear a painter’s smock which needed replacing long ago.
They are brutally ugly. Even their beak is black till they pass their fowl puberty. But, lo, with their late fall success of cardinal male adulthood, their garment is equal to Joseph’s of olden testament times. And their bright color will rule the winter like Joseph did in Egypt.
Notice I do not mention the female cardinal? They change only in beak color. Their feather frock remains gray-dirty brown like a fallen acorn transformed to humus.
I’m happy God changed His creation system between bird creation and Adam and Eve. I’m glad Gwen is more beautiful than me.
Besides cardinals, Angelkeep has spots of red on tomato vines. They will continue to produce till the frost is on the pumpkin. But my pumpkin never grew. I’d planted last year’s jack-‘O-lantern that never got carved.
This Halloween, Angelkeep is colored in redbird, cherry tomato, and evergreens. Halloween is old-school for the updated “harvest-fest.” That I grew up to associate with Thanksgiving. Of course Thanksgiving, adding to Abe Lincoln’s woes, is now most well known as the eve of the “Christmas Financial Boom.”
As I was saying, Angelkeep is decked in nature’s red and green. Being a retired teacher of color intelligence, red and green triggers Christmas (not Halloween) in my old-school brain. And that will explain to my neighbors—with apologies—for the October 31st appearance of wreathes, bows, and a lighted tree.
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their back yard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
by ALAN DAUGHERTY
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