The last cricket before dawn
Insomnia is a funny thing, I’ve wrestled with it for most of my life, almost enough to have a Tyler Durden alter ego in the making. The other night I was laying awake for most of it, listening to a couple of owls conversing back and forth form the big Garry Oak in the christmas tree farm across the street. A lone coyote up the hill bayed a call that none in the pack answered, but what burned in my ears the most were the crickets. They start just after dusk, one here one there, sometimes just out the window, and sometimes in the distance of the tall grass of the meadow at the top of the property. The few respond and before long the the late night crescendo reaches a fever pitch before the symphony begins to diminuendo and well before the break of dawn it’s just the lonely chirp here and there.
Colchicum ‘Antares’ is a delight in the fall garden.
The bulb season has been off to a great start! I got super lucky with my daughter Anya having one last week in Oregon before she heads back to her junior year at the UBC, so she filled orders this week. We got a ton of orders boxed up and shipped out thanks to her efforts. Some of the Autumn blooming stuff looks to be ahead of schedule this year, so don’t be surprised if you open your box of bulbs and find a blossom or two. I’ve often thought I would love to push the bulb season back to the cool of late September or October but the way these summers are going the Autumn stuff is really ready to go out by mid summer now.
So eventually, as if the conductor has settled the chorus into a single violin solo, there is that one last cricket before dawn. As I laid awake I wondered, is this the cricket that has been out playing around all night and just finally got around to that all important task of joining the choir, or is it the cricket that has been busy with the nights work, and when one song has finished it started another, and another and it won’t let the breaking of dawn and the dew tell it that it should stop. Or perhaps its the loneliest cricket whose song was never answered through the long nights canon and now in desperation it braves the breaking of the dawn to risk the crows beak, the cats claw or the snakes forked tongue searching for it in hopes that it will complete the tune. As the light starts to come through the shades, that last cricket finally disappears into a morendo al niente and the alarm clock says it’s time to get up and work.
Stay tuned for the fall sales updates and eventually the mailorder alpine list!
Cheers,
Mark