I wrote a post back in May about the importance of paying attention to fleeting pleasures, using pictures of my spring tulips as examples. Now we’re into October, and while Intellicast says that we have at least ten more days of warm days and cool-but-not-freezing nights, the first frost is coming, certainly by the last week of the month. My beautiful baskets of impatiens will droop and blacken, no longer the daily joy that they’ve been all summer. (Unlike the four o’clocks, the impatiens flowers don’t have to be deadheaded on any kind of regular basis. They’d probably look a little more groomed if I had trimmed them off periodically, but on the whole I’ve just watered and enjoyed them.) Right now they’re at their peak. I came up with an idea to have them cover the entire basket instead of just the top, and it has worked spectacularly well. (A combination of a landscape fabric lining with holes cut into it and many small seedlings. I may try to grow something a little more unusual next year from seed.) I’m trying to really pay attention to them in these last few weeks.
Interestingly, when I wrote the post about the tulips I mentioned that another transient pleasure coming up was the Cherry Creek Chorale’s performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Arapahoe Philharmonic. Guess what? We’re doing it again this coming Saturday evening at a super-cool venue in downtown Denver. And then that will truly be it for the Ninth, at least for the time being. Some aspects of the performance are kind of a pain, as we have limited free parking available and need to carpool and we have to trot across town tonight to rehearse with the orchestra at their location. All this is happening in the midst of preparations for our own concert on Oct. 23 and 24. But what a joy to be able to do it again! How soon it will all be over!
Fall is my favorite time of year, as it is for many people, but it’s bittersweet, a time of ending. A “liminal” time, as I mentioned in a recent Chorale post. Winter is coming, with its own pleasures and hardships. For now, though, I want to bask in the baskets!