This year, spring through summer, many changes have occurred throughout the seasons. One major, uninvited, alternation on our country property where we live was the removal of four beautiful trees. Now, at the threshold of autumn, the open rolling hills along our northern pasture are about to transform. The neighbors are putting in a vineyard.
In the following days and weeks, huge equipment will rip through the land. Dust will hover like low, lingering fog. Field workers will come and go. Parked cars will sit on the shoulders of our PRIVATE dead-end road. Voices and perhaps a little singing or whistling will drift over the foothills and into the valleys. After the plantings and later when the vines have grown, chemicals will contaminate the air, the land, and most likely on the volunteer oats where our beef cattle graze.
I know what to expect. Clements Vineyard is a few feet east of our property. During harvest season picking machines HOWL in the middle of the night. We don’t sleep. Yellow slow-moving headlights glow like dinosaur eyes and spook Ralphie. He runs from window to window barking repeatedly. I tell him, “It’s only headlights, Ralphie. Go to sleep.” Like a comedy portraying poor communication between characters, he doesn’t listen.
Staged for change at autumn’s oncoming approach, man is capsulizing my world into metamorphosis. I’m beginning to feel small, sandwiched in . . . overrun via alterations. Sooner or later I will adjust. So will Ralphie. Like my husband said, “It wouldn’t bother us if we were putting in the vineyard.” © 2011 Dianne Marie Andre
In and Around the Garden 