I had a bit of a cold, but the forecast was calling for clouds in the afternoon and for rain all the next day, so I decided to ride the bicycle around the neighborhood for a bit while the sky was still blue. I could get a bit of sun, and away from the soggy tissues, breathe the fresh autumn air.
I was glad I did. All across the neighborhood all sorts of flowers were blooming.
In November.
I was meandering about, taking pictures, when suddenly I remembered my friend Tamiko telling me about some cosmos that were blooming somewhere near the prefectural hospital. I called her and she explained where they were. I was expecting a little plot, a couple of meters squared, so I was in for a pleasant surprise.
Wow! I was pretty sure I was in an ordinary intown neighborhood (the lovely cement electrical pole being the big hint), but I half felt I’d made my way to the land of Oz—that it was all right there, spreading out right in front of me. (Imagine the moment when Dorothy and her buddies emerge from the forest and spot the magnificent home of the wizard across the field of flowers—before the wicked witch of the West sticks her big nose into things.)
Lovely, indeed.
The lady living in the house across the street was out, so I chatted her up, and she, it ends up, was the one who’d planted the field. She’d rented it from a guy living on the other side of it. She’d been planting rice in the summer and these cosmos in the fall, for the last six years. I told her she had done a wonderful thing.
A young couple had come along, too, with their one-year-old girl. The man and woman took turns taking pictures. I love to see parents trying to get their little ones to smile, and I was happy to offer to snap a shot of the three of them together. Of course, with their camera, not mine.
I like to feel useful at least once a day, even if it’s only something on this level.
Delicious.
But if it’s November and the cosmos are lovely like this, then the persimmons are bound to be, too. Indeed, trees all over the neighborhood were heavy with fruit.
And you know about my thing for persimmons. So plump, so orange, so magical.
And yes, yes, I’ll say it again: I cannot stop having persimmon dreams.
And I suspect I’m not the only one. You may think that the folks living in the house below are merely hanging persimmons out to dry so that they can eat them . . .
but don’t be surprised if you discover that they sleep inside that nearest room, and with their heads closest to that sliding glass door, and that they do so intentionally so that they can better have persimmon dreams.
The bright orange of the persimmon,
The sun, the soil, or the rain?
I knew, what with the cold, I was going to be a bit worn out when I got back home, and that my cough would come roaring back—and it did—but after all my meandering, I could not not go back and take one more look at that beautiful field of cosmos.
Before the clouds and the rain rolled in.
