September 1

If April is the time we begin spring cleaning, in anticipation of the warmth and freshness that summer affords, September is sadly when we begin to button up.

It is still warm out, which makes this preparation all the more bittersweet, knowing that our days of comfortable weather are nearing their end.

September is usually the time when the wood that was felled, cut and seasoned in the spring and summer sun is split and stacked into the barn. This year, I neglected to drop a few trees in the lower woods and thus needed to order a cord of seasoned hardwood. In anticipation of stacking, I went to inspect and tidy the area of the barn used for wood storage, which is also where we keep the snow blower, spare gardening materials, and cast offs from spring and summer projects.

Red squirrels had established themselves as summer tenants, building a nest out of fiberglass insulation in the eaves, taking the material from the adjoining junk room. After an undisturbed season, they made a mess of things, and there were nuts, grass, corn cobs and other detritus strewn about.

It took me the better part of an hour to clean, and only once did the reds chitter at me for disturbing their area. I did refrain from bothering their main nest up high, though I removed the rest of their mess.

Fortunately, nothing had taken residency in the snowblower engine cowling, and I suspect the naphthalene pellets I placed there last spring repelled the deer mice.

On top of the remaining stack of wood unused from last winter, I placed a rolled up sisal rug (just to get it out of the way). When I grabbed it to take it over to the adjoining room, a mother deer mouse plopped out of the end, several babies clinging desperately to her. I saw all this in the fraction of a second that it took for her to fall onto my sandal shoe. I heard a squeak, felt them hit my foot, then watched them launch into the air as I screamed like a little girl, kicking upward.