Fall Simmer

I love FallSimmer garlic, onions, peppers and squash...Vegetables picked before I let the chickens out at dawn.Shush don't point to poultry there's feed in the lower garden.You'll find it strange if I tell the names of the chooks.Dixie is a speckled Sussex. She's first. Dixie leads a chick band, though she isn't the largest or a rooster. Dixie is the daughter of my neighbor's male from his rogue visit.
Yesterday I picked the last pumpkins up from the raised beds, they stand guard outside the front gate. Chickens will eat pumpkins before Halloween if inside.
Last night coyotes yelped and hollered at three A.M. With my mag flashlight in hand, I went out to have a meeting with them. They know I have a shotgun."Want me to drive down to the barn and settle this?" I yelled.They gathered silent. No snickers about my nightgown.
Answer came from the Dr's barn in the canyon where the puppies cry and the big dogs growl.Under the sky Ursula Major and Minor point towards thesolar lights in the valley below. Glow shared from stars to a crescent moon,
platinum against a cloudless dome.Coyotes look up with me in that second.The pack's paws crunch on ash leaves
scattered on rocks, now become softer.The coy wolves leave without argument. "Try your luck with the bucks hanging in the oak grove," I whispered to their long gone tails. 
Copyright October 8 2016 Caroline Gerardo


My neighbor's pen