The Corona Diaries Vol 37: Evidence of Autumn

(mid-September 2021)

There is a tree across the street that began changing color in late August. At first it was just a handful of leaves scattered here and there. But a few more turned every day and, before I knew it, the scene out front was clothed in green and yellow - evidence of autumn.

It mocks us every time we look out of our picture window, serving as a reminder that cooler temperatures are on the way along with leaves to rake. Not far behind that will be snow in need of shoveling, icy sidewalks to traverse, and ever increasing heating bills.

While I like winter, I sometimes wish we could fast forward through fall. It's a time of endings. Birds migrate away, the trees lose their withered leaves, plants die, and so on. It'd be nice to get through that phase more quickly and just arrive at winter with all of its lovely snow, the cups of hot cocoa, and the Frau's nightly jeremiads issued from the folds of her electric blanket about how cold she is.

But polar vortices are still a few months away and I intend to enjoy the autumn as much as I am able. This will involve taking in the colorful foliage, fresh apples, pumpkin dishes, not sweating immediately upon exiting the shower, et al. Right now I am trying to schedule one last lawn mowing for the year. Can I make it until October? Since we lost 2 out of our 3 trees, my lawn doesn't get anywhere as leafy as before and the first mow of spring mulches the previous autumn's leaves, getting rid of the evidence of my laziness.

As the seasons change, so do my eating habits. In addition to foods that are freshly harvested, cooler weather means heartier fare. I have started by grabbing a bag of the fall seasonal coffee from my favorite coffee roaster.

The folks at Just Coffee Co-op roast the beans longer which brings out the, well, roastier flavors. The darker roasts of cold weather coffees have smokier aromas and more dark chocolate flavors. A slab of Pan de Muerto and a cup of this stuff will start your day right on a chilly autumn morning.

I've also begun to drink seasonal beers. Yesterday I bought a six pack of some pumpkin beer from Milwaukee's Lakefront Brewery.

Most pumpkin beers are sweet and cloying and strive to mimic pumpkin pie. What I like about this brew is that it's less sweet and more earthy tasting with a nice ginger zing. It's a beer that just happens to have the same spices in it that pumpkin pie does and is not some misguided neo-alchemical attempt to convert the dessert into liquid form.

I hope to use up a bag of charcoal before the weather makes grilling impossible (or impractical, at least) but have also been contemplating slightly heavier, more filling types of foods. Being of Eastern European stock, cooler weather gives me the urge to cook buckwheat groats. I don't have any memories of being served kasha while I was growing up but it's possible that I was. I found a recipe for groats with Brussels sprouts and, since my Frau loves the sprouts, I am going to whip up a batch. Or give serious thought to it, at the bare minimum.

I also would like to make some bigos - Polish hunter's stew. In the past I have made a quick, down & dirty version of it but perhaps I'll try something a little more traditional with more treats from the forest like venison and perhaps dried fruit. Stay tuned.

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One day last week when I was working from home, I heard a bird call coming in through a window. It was a loud, stuttering cry that sounded vaguely familiar yet I just could not place it no matter how hard I racked my brain. Wandering over to the window, I looked out at the nearby trees but saw nothing out of the ordinary. A scan of the canopies revealed the usual suspects: crows and sparrows and finches who were going about their daily routines of eating, pooping on my car, and chasing one another. I returned to my work.

Almost as soon as I sat down, I heard the call again. Back to the window I went to peruse the scene. Giving up on the trees, I looked elsewhere. It was then that I saw it. There was a lone Sandhill crane on the corner across the street! I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs.

My luck was in that day because, when I got downstairs, the crane had crossed the street and was in our front yard.

The gods must have been really happy with me because it came right up to our picture window to peck at some of the bird seed that had fallen from the feeder there. (The cats love having a feeder right in front of window.) I think that's millet growing there on the left from fallen seeds.

There were gentle thumps as it pecked at the cover to the window well that had a lot of feed on it because birds are incredibly messy eaters. Even messier than cats!

Had I not been so excited at having a crane in the yard and instead been thinking clearly, I would have gone out the back door and come around to get some photographs without a window in the way. Our cat Piper was snoozing in her cat house directly beneath the picture window and I chided her sotto voce for sleeping instead of checking out the avian visitor.

I wondered where our other cat, Grabby, was as she loves watching the animals outside while perched in various windows around the house. Sleeping, I figured. She's 13 and generally hits the rack after breakfast. (She promptly rises at 3:30 and petitions us for chow even though she knows full well that dinner isn't served until 5.) I went over to our front door to get a better view of the crane as it had started walking down the block and found Grabby keeping a close eye on the proceedings.

Sadly, I had to call into a meeting for work and so ended my bird watching. However, I was able to hear its resounding call from the window next to my desk for a while before it finally left the area.

While I am on the subject of avian friends, I finally managed to get a decent photograph of a blue jay.

Blue jays are pretty but they're jerks who chase other birds off of our feeder even though there's plenty of tasty seeds to go around.

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Several entries ago, I told of how my Frau and I drove out to the town of Marshall to pay a visit to the new incarnation of our favorite Mexican restaurant. And, afterwards, we decided that we would have dinner there the last Tuesday of every month.

On our most recent visit, we found that there were bags of pears scattered around the joint with notes attached to them that read "FREE! GRATIS!" Apparently, the restaurant was given a free case of pears, presumably by their produce vendor, and was giving them away to customers.

We took a bag. I mean, who doesn't like free produce? At home we pondered just what to do with them until the internet provided the answer: clafoutis.

The Frau made it. You fan the pear slices out at the bottom of a pie dish and then add a custard. It was wonderful! She enjoyed it so much, she made a special trip to the grocery store a couple days later so she could whip up a cherry clafoutis.

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My latest excursion to the cinema was to see the Swedish film About Endlessness by Roy Andersson. He is reported to have said that this is his last movie. I seem to recall that his 2014 film, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, played at the film festival here several years ago. And his You, the Living is on my To Watch list. But this was the first time I'd ever seen one of his films.

It's a series of vignettes that uses a mix of very droll humor and absurdity to illustrate human existence. Some scenes portray the vagaries of Fate which push characters to extremes while others lure the viewer into simply observing the mundane. A few scenes stand out for me.

A priest who has lost his faith appears multiple times. In one instance he goes to his medical doctor begging for help but is rejected because it is closing time. There's pathos here but also some very dark humor.

In another scene, an immigrant father holds his daughter's corpse. A voice over narrator informs us that he did so to protect his family's honor but that he had changed his mind.

In a much lighter vein, at one point we see a trio of young women walking down a path and come to a café. Upbeat music can be heard coming from inside and the women spontaneously burst into dance.

The movie is very interesting stylistically. Each vignette was shot very theatrically with a completely static camera and there are no cuts. I found that this technique focused my attention or, at least, provided less distraction. Instead of feeling that my attention needs to shift from one character to another with cuts to closeups of various faces, I get the whole scene at once. I was able to take in facial expressions and observe where people sit or stand in relation to one another at my leisure. I felt like I was able to watch the scenes unfold at my own pace rather than being prodded by the editing.

Highly recommended.

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Bonus photo: I got a new phone recently and the camera app has some special effects that you can add to your photographs. Here's a psychedelic picture of Piper. Imagine, if you will, some sitar playing in the background.