I forgot last night and now the begonias out on the deck that were so pretty and luscious and red all summer -- are toppled over on themselves and quite definitely dead. It wasn't really an early freeze or even a hard one, but then begonias are fleshy.
So are people. Paper says the homeless shelters here are filled in this time-out-of-kilter year of constant surprises.
Most of us are still busy carving pumpkins and hoping for Indian summer. We path over our mallard heavy backyard ponds -- glory in our New England crimson fens peaked with burnt orange and burnished gold of turning leaf and yawning limb.
It is humiliatingly long before winter splays its hoary sleep over this normally self sufficient granite land -- a sad time for begonias and people who have already fallen.
