Frost, before the frost...

There's quite a few poems that live in my head, at least some pivotal lines and phrases. This one, for instance, which popped into my head this morning. It's chilly, it's dark, but the forecast for the daylight hours includes a last push from Mother Nature--60s. I need to get out to the garden boxes to see if there's anything else I need to harvest before tearing out the plants. We still have not had a frost, which is really quite odd, but I feel like it's coming, possibly by the weekend. We are "promised" maybe two days of this last warmth, and I want to use it to my advantage. The bird bath must be emptied and stored, the outside water shut off. G has already stowed the hoses and the deck furniture that has to be kept out of the colder weather.

How did I get so busy that I still didn't get to sit outside on the deck? There's an imbalance in my days that I need to figure out-- I'm tired, and there is a lot to do-- more that should have been done. But, as Frost points out, "Something has to be left to God." 

Have a good day,

C

Good-by and Keep Cold

BY ROBERT FROST

This saying good-by on the edge of the dark

And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark

Reminds me of all that can happen to harm

An orchard away at the end of the farm

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse

By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an ax—

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

Robert Frost, "Good-by and Keep Cold" from New Hampshire. Copyright © 1923 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Public Domain.