Jagged stakes of lath can be seen protruding crookedly from the soil at the back of the property. Each thin strip of wood is about 4 feet tall and was sharpened with a miter saw and pounded into the top of what was once a flourishing pumpkin bed. The Lath are exactly 30 feet from one another when measuring East to West, and 5 feet from each other, measuring North to South. Each lath has a different color of vinyl tape tied around its top. The tape, depending on its color, corresponds specifically to an experimental fungicide that was sprayed upon the crop every 7 days for a month or so. An early frost destroyed the crop entirely in the last week of October and left behind an army of scarved scarecrows looming eerily and keeping watch over the rotting pumpkin fruit and black, frost-killed leaves. It is desolate and sad to look at. Some of the fruit are still firm and look as though they would sit nicely upon a porch. Others appear to melt into the earth as a result of their recently vectored rots and molds. Once the disease sets in, it breaks down the plant cell walls. These are the things that allow the pumpkins to maintain their shape, and to stand upright and contain all of their guts. The season is nearing its end. Detritus feeders skitter drunkenly from fruit to fruit. All that remains of the 2020 growing season is frost hardy weeds and an acre or so of tomatoes that succumbed to the cold as well. The Mediterranean subtropical climate here allows for a few unforgiving moments at the margins of typical annual climate behavior. The early frost caused some serious crop loss. Having freeze-susceptible plants in the ground past October 15 is simply gambling.
This time of year the afternoons are oddly long. The sun warms and lights from afar. It seems that late morning dies slowly into evening with no real way of knowing it happened. Amber light is cast low through a blanket of fine particles suspended in the windless sky. The air is putrid and tepid as a result of recent manure spreading and high relative humidity. A spell of warm weather drifted in despite the outlier frost events, and now an Indian summer pervades the short days.
The smell of fermented plums hangs close to the orchard as I leave the field, and head back to the house. Swarms of crazy gnats and liquor acridity fade away as the sun finally vanishes behind the Western mountain range where it appears that God struck arc, and welds the rest of today to the beginning of tomorrow. A wooden auger bearing howls in abrasive failure at an almond huller several country blocks to the East; tolling the death knell of autumn, and ushering us back into the cold. We’ll know this for certain when the last leaves have fallen, and winter is no longer pressing, but stands in barren regalia.
