Today we sat out on her acreage, my daughter and I, watching her chickens scratch among the garden plants and along the fence line for bugs. The various greens of the scrubby, short oaks, aspens, and cedars were vivid against the hazy sky, which was the blue of a pale denim washed until threadbare. The near hundred-degree heat makes all the plant life wilt: the trees, none of which are yet a century old, their progenitors transplanted to the area after the Dustbowl of 1930; the prairie grass, a lumpy, uneven lawn trimmed by goats and horses who pass over certain flowers, preferring other, tastier leaves; the thready vines, twisting around trees and generations-old barbed wire fences. The humidity reminds one why Amazonian tribes gave up clothing as a bad idea long ago. And everything is covered with a light coating of the Oklahoma red clay. If you rub your finger down a leaf or over your car window (or a sweaty forehead or the back of a neck), you will find a line of pale, dusty rose dirt.
It hasn’t rained for weeks.
Orange Monarch butterflies, hummingbirds, and an Indio bunting flitted around our heads. We saw turkey buzzards circling overhead until a white-headed kite chased them off. The sounds of insects and songbirds was only interrupted by the shrieks of my grandchildren chasing each other past us into the shade of the trees of the horse pasture with pop guns and water pistols. (The horses were unconcerned. The rhythm of their tails swatting away flies and sweat bees from their gleaming coats did not change.)
Everything around us said high summer. We chatted for hours, too hot and lazy to do much else.
But…
The angle of the sunlight said Autumn.
The trees, not native to the area perhaps, but native to the climate, were shyly changing their leaves. The tips and tops are now yellows, oranges, and the vibrant reds, seen especially in the sumac that dot the undergrowth. The screaming cicadas are now silent, their corpses a tasty snack for the chickens, fussing and muttering as they scratch and peck and search. They aren’t laying now, those chickens, as their energy is directed at molting new, warmer feathers.
The smell of wild blackberry jam boiling on the stove wafted from my daughter’s kitchen, and jars of homemade pickles crowded the counters. A canning frenzy of peaches, nectarines, jams, and preserves, putting away for the winter, is reported throughout the neighborhood.
Schoolwork was piled on the table, a half-written paper on the laptop, and the khaki pants with navy tops that is the semi-uniform for school waited, folded neatly (for the moment) on the dressers.
I just stepped outside my apartment door to take out the trash. The cicadas are still singing here. If I were ten years old again, I’d ask my mom if I could play at the neighbors’ until the sun went down, because that’s what the quality of the light is telling me I should do. There’s plenty of time, and no school tomorrow. But that same light is shining through a tree with leaves turning red, which should mean a bit of chill in the air this close to sunset, not heat rising from the sidewalk.
Oklahoma, even after all these years, leaves me mighty confused this time of year.
