Mushrooms are coming on thick and fast as autumn progresses. In the woods this week, I saw some that looked like brain coral. Some that looked like dainty parasols. Some that looked like multicolored, fanned-out feathers. My friend Sue struck it rich recently on a friend’s property; they looked for and found giant puffballs. Puffballs are wonders to behold, about the color and size of volleyballs growing on the ground–volleyballs of deliciousness.
As the delta variant of CoVid continues to spread anxiety and worse, folks around the neighborhood have intensified their efforts to cheer each other up. Games, drawings, and heartening messages are appearing on the sidewalks again. Some householders have put miniature dioramas along the walks. And of course, with Halloween fast approaching, seasonal decorations are out, too. Most of them are charming. At least a couple are monumental. And this morning, I saw a new item of Halloween scariness, a largish model snake. So cool.
The decorations have an outward-facing sense to them, as if they’re there to delight children and other passersby more than to adorn the houses and yards. The placement is different. Yes, there are decorations on porches, but many, many of them are right out by the sidewalk, shared pleasures, shared diversions, shared efforts at community.
While the dog and I were out walking yesterday morning, our neighbor Tanya pulled her car over to tell me she’d just put two boxes of wood poppy plants on our porch. Cory had dug them up at a friend’s house for us the day before. Thus, we have two neighbors and an unknown benefactor to thank for the gift of native plants that will bloom bright yellow to cheer us in the spring and in springs to come.
Horse chestnuts are a highlight of this time of year. They are gift-wrapped presents for children. The wrapping is prickly and green, spherical husks that split open, as if along a seam, when the nuts inside are ready. The nuts are fabulously smooth, brown, and shiny, usually one per husk, but sometimes twins.
“Yes, and there was oil on the nuts that was good for your hands,” Marilyn adds, remembering the horse chestnuts of our childhood. “How did you know it was good for your hands?” I ask. “It felt like it was good for your hands,” she answers.
Our source of horse chestnuts when we were kids was trees near church. The trees were big then, and they’re bigger now. Horse chestnut trees can live hundreds of years. Nuts that fell on the sidewalk and lawn extension were fair game, and one year Mom and Dad let us go knock on the door of a house with a yard full of ungathered treasures. Two elderly ladies answered the door—as old as the trees, to our young eyes—and they seemed downright giddy that children would like to pause in their yard and reap the harvest. We ended up with so many nuts that we couldn’t hold them all in our hands, so we used the skirts of our dresses to carry them to the car. All little girls wore dresses to church back then. But, as all little girls also wore slips, Mom and Dad didn’t mind so much our using our skirts as baskets.
We had such a bounty of horse chestnuts that year that we strung them into necklaces. I remember pounding nails through the nuts to turn them into beads. Marilyn, on the other hand—she who can and does fix anything—used a hand drill. “I remember the inside of the nuts gunked up the bit,” she says. “How did you get rid of the gunk?” I asked. “Pulled it off with my hands,” she says, “just like I do now.”*
Some years back, as an adult, I had a chance to choose trees for the grassy island in our court, and I chose horse chestnuts. “Aren’t they pretty messy?” a neighbor asked me, dubious of my choice. “Delightfully messy,” I responded. “Children love them.” This year’s crop of nuts is on the ground now. I keep cutting across that part of the court when the dog and I come home from our walks, and I look for horse chestnuts shining in the leaves. Sometimes, I pick them up to see if they’re as smooth as I remember. They are. Then I put them back for children to find. These are autumn treasures.
*Marilyn’s latest project is making spinning-top toys to donate to kids, through her woodworking club, turning the tops on her lathe. Her favorite shape so far is acorn.