Bon Voyage, Persephone!

Fall at last, Fall at last, thank God almighty, it's Fall at last! Now that Persephone has departed for her Autumnal sojourn Down Under (where she is making a spectacular comeback), We have arrived at the most breathtaking time of year in Maine. The hills are already choosing their hues for the Fall Fashion extravaganza and the air is crisp with anticipation.

On a closer-to-home and more personal level, Fall is presenting me with a much longed-for opportunity for revenge. Now that the climate has reinvented itself those carnivorous raspberry and blackberry vines are a little less full of themselves. I sharpen my pruning shears in full view of them. I can sense their arrogance and fight have waned. All summer long as I mowed along their borders they consistently harassed and violated me despite every effort to avoid and not provoke them. The old saying says that revenge is better when served cold. Well, it's been a month or so chilling on the sill and about to be dished up. Bwa ha ha ha! They are insidious. They constantly ignore the fencing erected in a treaty agreement--'This is the line, you can have everything on that side and I get everything on this side'. They tunnel beneath to spring up in open lawn. They parachute over and attack all comers. Arrogance. Cocky, narcissistic arrogance. I had the same agreement with the sumac grove. They adhered politely. The same was true with the golden rod and rhubarb. But not the berries. Oh no, not them. From the start they attempted to usurp my authority and overthrow my government. Mother Nature had other priorities so there was no appeal. They entered into an axis of evil with the birds. The berries bribed them with food in exchange for smuggling their seeds to the far reaches of my realm whereupon they sprouted, thus dividing my attention and energies. The retribution I have in mind for them would be less severe had they been as generous with their fruit with my household as they were with the birds. Their all-consuming intent on the conquest of my lawn and resolve cost them their entire inventory. It will prove to be a hollow victory. As the temperature dips my vindictiveness rises. The day of reckoning approaches!