from the NY TIMES, a beautiful tale.

The Rural Life
Belated Frost
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By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: October 31, 2007
In the absence of a general, killing frost, people have become expert in the subtleties of what the season has so far not delivered. The other day I heard a farmer refer to the “high” frost that had hit his farm in upstate New York. It coated the windows on his pickup but didn’t touch the fields. Down in the valleys, people know that the frost on their lawns doesn’t entirely count, because the hillsides above them haven’t been hit. A killing frost to a pot of basil is merely a pleasant evening to a stand of Brussels sprouts, but until the past few days, even the basil has not been bothered.

I think the first frost has finally come. It wasn’t a deep black frost, the kind that makes the unprepared gardener weep. Two mornings in a row the pasture has turned white, and the thick stands of goldenrod have turned silver. Even the most utilitarian stretches of countryside — the fields of corn stubble — have been glazed with what feels like a kind of anticipation, a readiness for snow if it ever comes again. A thin line of wood smoke hangs just above the trees, and where the hillsides rise above the highway, the wood smoke lies in tendrils, the way water vapor does on a wet summer day.

Everyone up here has noticed how late this frost is, and how deep into October some of the trees have kept their leaves. Pastures that were going brown in the drought of summer have greened up again. There has barely been skim ice on the stock tanks. But if things seem awry and you want to talk about it here in the country, you talk about what it costs when the fuel oil truck comes, and you feel uneasily grateful that it has come so few times yet this fall. Winter usually arrives on a very tight schedule, and it’s hard to regret a little slack, even if it feels worrisome.

The first frost isn’t everything, though. I’m still waiting for the hard one, the one makes the steel gates bitter to the touch and drives the bees deep into the core of their hive. That kind of frost puts away any thoughts of last-minute regeneration. It makes it clear that some time is going to have to pass — and it’s going to have to get a lot colder — before there is any hint of rebirth. When that frost will come is anyone’s guess. Right now, the frost we’re having still seems ornamental, a last-minute embellishment for Halloween.

VERLYN KLINKENBORG