Farewell, My Okra...

Phillip over at the Hog Blog posted a nice rumination yesterday on fall's impending arrival. Fall is indeed coming. I can see it in the birds; in the gathering of the Mississippi kites as they drift in lazy circles on the air currents, in the disappearance of most of our summer songbirds back to their neotropical winter haunts, in the group of blue-winged teal I noticed on a roadside pond yesterday, and in the solitary, ever-angry rufous hummers who have begun to show up at our feeder to rest, drink, and beat up on our resident ruby-throats for a day or two before moving on toward the Gulf of Mexico and that unbelievable flight across the water.

Soon enough, I will begin spotting our fall and winter birds, both in the field and the back yard, and when I see my first northern harrier gliding low over the sagebrush, I'll know fall is truly here. But in the meantime, I know that fall is coming, as Phillip says, because my okra tells me so...

It still blooms, for now, but it's beginning to get spindly and rather leaf-bare, just like it always does about this time of year as the ever-shortening daylight cycle kickstarts the fall photoperiodism that signals inevitable okra doom. But not before a few more pods can be harvested. My okra is like the local mourning dove: it thrives in the oppressive heat of summer, but once that first early September cold front comes barreling through, it starts checking out. Not all at once, but in waves. You'll still get a bit, for a while, but you'll have to work at it.

So yesterday evening, with the knowledge that a strong front was coming through, the kind of front that makes both okra and dove disappear, we went back out and worked at it again...

A howling south wind and a week of pressure lit the afterburners on the dove. There were no dumb, lazy floaters this evening, but after a little while we settled down and managed another pair of well-earned limits. With the promise of rain and a high of 69 tomorrow, this may be the last sure-thing hunt of the season. From here on out it's hit-or-miss, for dove and okra both...