More observations from where I am

There is a field between the subdivision where we live and the freeway. It lies fallow. I've seen pictures taken from the air of this neighborhood back in the 50's - when the freeway was still being built. We live atop a former orchard and next to the field and us are the remains of that place. Now, the land grows whatever each of us places in it and the field lies fallow - but I don't know why. I don't know who owns it but I'm told the county comes and plows it to knock the grasses back down.

Yesterday I decided to go out and walk it. The land is clay and my steps have to be uneaven in order to negotiate the large clods of ex-mud turned over by the infertile plow. It didn't take long, five or ten minutes and then I was at the other end looking back toward the corner of the houses where I had walked out and away from suburbia groomed. It seemed small and far away. Below my own shoe prints in the dust I saw deer and rabbit tracks and perhaps a mountain lion or perhaps just a dog. There are mountain lions near by. Then, a couple more steps and I'm back out on Fulton Road - another farming place becoming something else but still remembering what it was. Cars speed by me on their way to and from that river of travelers called 101 and as I walk it, I think what it must have been like when this road was just a country lane. I pass an old farmhouse that looks like it is being used to house farmworkers. There is a kitchen garden and on the edge of it, a distance from the house, someone - perhaps homesick - planted a now well established cacti. Are they still here to see it?

Last week I was in Chicago but no leaves had yet turned. I remarked on this to a mid-westerner who thought the whole thing too early. Perhaps it is.

In the meantime, I've been learning something new about home-grown tomatoes. Their taste changes - it becomes less bright, less "good" and more old, more wet, as the garden turns away from summer. This is ironic as the majority of the tomatoes are starting to finally ripen. I now cut them up, boil them down, and freeze for future use in mid-winter sauces and soups when we will have a deep longing for the taste of August.

What are you noticing?