Labour and the fruits thereof...

This has been the week for trying to finish up the autumn chores before the rainy season starts in earnest. That's meant clearing leaves and bits of cedar clicks off the deck (clicks? I don't know what else to call them, the cedar equivalent of fallen leaves). It's a task that needs to be completed before the nighttime bursts of wet, or the deck turns into a mass of gooey orange bits. Seasonal decorations, I suppose, but not particularly desirable. 

Other jobs that need doing? Slicing and drying more fruit -- all of it free. This time, it's apples from the overly bountiful tree at a friend's place. Before those, it was quince from the copious amount of fruits from the tree in our front yard. Little bags of each will probably find their way into Christmas baskets. 

Maybe the least pleasant (though one of the most necessary) is pruning the English ivy that drapes itself along the fence between us and the neighbour. It's thick enough that it helps provide a wall of privacy, but because it's an invasive species, it has to be discouraged -- and definitely kept off of the trees along that same border. Its pollen is horrific (even as I type this, my nose has started itching). A few years ago I did a post where I was dressed in basically a homemade Hazmat suit -- all so I could do a pre-autumn chop. 

This time, as I filled another bucket with debris, I couldn't help but think that the ivy's flowers look an awful lot like images of the virus that's been keeping us masked up and in relative isolation. Maybe all along, the all-too-stalwart ivy was trying to warn us what might lie ahead.

But in amongst all of these tasks, the best remains the tending of the berries -- this time even offering their own small reward -- a tiny bowl of perfectly red, sun-sweetened raspberries. 

Mmmm.