The morning is sticky and crickety, humid ambiance of late summer, though the darkness is pure autumn. The insect buzz is unrelenting, a kind of planetary tinnitus: is it nature or just the inside of my head? And now a jay squawks: pauses: squawks again. Despite the streetlights and the dusky shadows, the day birds have sailed into their kingdom.

Yesterday I filled a bushel-basket with kale, a real farm harvest from my tiny plot. I sat outside to clean it for washing and blanching--ripping away stems, tearing the leathery leaves into pieces. I sat under the shadow of the black-lace elderberry, with its feather leaves; I sat beside a riot of cosmos and zinnias . . . a nest, an arbor, tucked beside the plain unstylish house, with its worn vinyl siding and stupid vinyl shutters. Beauty and ugliness: they'd better learn to get along.

The basket of kale cooked down to three packed quart bags, enough for six winter meals. Otherwise, the freezer stash is pretty thin: just a couple of bags of blueberries, a couple of bags of foraged mushrooms, half a quart of tomato sauce, a bag of green beans. I do have plenty of freshly dried herbs and a decent garlic crop curing in the shed, and it's possible I'll collect enough cucumbers for refrigerator pickles. But I doubt I'll do any canning. The pepper crop is a bust. The tomatoes may give me a few quarts of future sauce but no more than that. Still, there's firewood on the way, and that's always a comfort. We will be warm, no matter what.

At this time of year, all of my nerves strain toward harvest and battening down . . . though of course there's no reason for me to act this way. I live in town; I am not in any way self-sufficient. This is all an illusion. Nonetheless, the season works upon me.

I finished rereading Jane Eyre yesterday and now I am at loose ends. I need to dig out another novel; I need to figure out what my brain longs for. The house is tidy, but my thoughts are not. They pile up in corners like old newspapers.

In a month I'll turn 59, last year of a pretend youth. I am feeling my age . . . the elegy of my long love affair with life. I have adored being on earth.