Traveling south into Connecticut, I enjoy a back road route
through the old villages of Hazardville, Scitico, Melrose, and Broad Brook-- hamlets that were long ago swallowed up
into the towns of Enfield and East Windsor.
Below Route 190, it's mostly
farmland--tobacco, corn, apples, squash, blueberries, and tree farms. I enjoy watching the seasons change--the rough furrows of soil being
made ready for planting in the spring, and a
little later acres of rhododendrons and azaleas flashing bright pink. This time
of year the orchards are loaded with apples.
This week in between fields cut back ready for a winter's rest,
there was a whole field of sunflowers still standing and staring at their
namesake, and a field of perfectly ripe pumpkins I hadn't noticed last
week. Between last week and this, the pumpkins'
leaves had dried and withered, exposing this array of round orange fruit. I did
not see any farm stand nearby selling pumpkins, so I suspect there are no
future jack o' lanterns here. These are the leftovers, left to be eaten by the
wildlife.
A little beyond the field of pumpkins is an old tobacco barn that
has fallen. I remember its slow leaning, leaning, finally succumbing to gravity
with the help of a hurricane. The old
barn, the old villages have past, but today the pumpkins are ripe and ready.
