From The Innkeepers

On the First Frost

It’s time to say goodbye to October. 

The past month has been a beautiful whirlwind. We hosted four beloved groups who have been coming here for many years. It is a joy to welcome them back in October, when the inn is in her glory. The weather this fall has been spectacular. We decked out the front steps with three tiers of mums, and the front porch and gardens are decorated with pumpkins that we pulled out of our accidental pumpkin patch. (Backstory: Last fall we bought a bunch of pumpkins and gourds from nearby farms to decorate the porch, then threw them in our compost pile at the end of the season. To our surprise, by mid-summer the compost pile had become an enormous pumpkin patch that thrived despite no help from us. In early October, we finally waded in and pulled out enough pumpkins to fill a wheelbarrow. Over the next couple of weeks, we filled two more wheelbarrows, and by the final harvest, we had more than 70 pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, and colors sprinkled around the porch and front gardens.) 

Sadly, the warm fall weather took a break for one fateful night, and a hard frost decimated the cut flower garden midway through October. It was particularly heartbreaking because the dahlias had started blooming like crazy as fall began. The day before the forecasted frost, it was rainy and blustery, so I decided against trying to cover anything, knowing the sheets would just blow away. I cut as many flowers as I could before the rain came and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, when I looked out the next morning, a sparkly frost blanketed the lawn.

We had a group here that day, but I eventually made my way out before brunch service to survey the damage. Even though I knew the frost was probably coming, I was surprised by how sad I felt to see the shocked state of my once vibrant garden. What was just the day before a beautiful jumble of bright flowers on hardy green stems was now a graveyard of crispy, blackened skeletons with droopy heads rattling in the wind. I knew the snapdragons and strawflowers would probably persevere, but there was no hope for the dahlias and zinnias. Remember in The Princess Bride when Inigo Montoya and Fezzik take Westley to see Miracle Max and he gives them a sliver of hope, telling them Westley is only mostly dead? Well, even Miracle Max couldn’t have saved these flowers. They were undeniably dead dead. 

Trying to find the bright side of the frost, Aaron and I set out later that day to pick berries from the autumn olive bushes that are invading the meadow. Supposedly they are significantly sweeter after a frost. Aaron made them into a batch of jam, and we now have a unique treat to offer our guests when we serve toast at brunch.

Autumn is bittersweet like this. So much beauty and bounty, but so many impending goodbyes. Every day now, I check the lake to see if the trumpeter swans are still here. We have a pair that returns to the lake each year, and they were able to raise one baby this summer. To our knowledge, neither of the parents left the lake all summer. They were always there, two white forms with their fuzzy gray “ugly duckling.” Now the baby is more of an awkward looking teenager. Still gray, but larger now, more than half its parents’ size. I had been wondering how the parents would teach their little one to fly before it was time to begin their migration. Surely there had to be a conditioning period. You can’t just run a marathon on your first day of walking. Especially if you are a fledgling trumpeter swan, the largest species of waterfowl and the heaviest flying bird in North America. (Facts.)

Then one day in early October, Aaron noticed one swan fly up out of the water and circle the pond a few times, then land back in the water to join its family, as if to say to its child, “Hey, we can also do this!” A week or so later I saw both parents take off and fly toward the wetlands behind our property, leaving the cygnet behind (another new word for your nature vocabulary). It was kind of shocking because all summer the three were always together, but I guess fear of abandonment is a good motivator. 

By the end of the month there were several days that the whole family was missing. I wondered if they had left already. They didn’t even say goodbye, I thought. But a few days ago, I was reading out on the deck and heard a single trumpet honk, then the three of them (mom, dad, and their awkward teen) flew together over my head from the direction of nearby Hungerford Lake and landed back on our lake, immediately picking a fight with the geese, who thought they now had the lake to themselves. Turns out the swans were just off on a training flight, letting the young one accumulate some hours toward its flying permit.

Even though they’re still here for now, we know that, like the unstoppable frost, winter will come, and the swan family will leave, searching for a more hospitable environment. Eventually their offspring will set out on its own, find a new place to live, and make its own life. Aaron and I know the ending to this story well and can recommend The Graduate as a great place to stay if their cygnet ends up in East Lansing, as we were just there visiting last week. 

For our last retreat group in October, I stubbornly resisted buying dining room flowers from Meijer and scraped together a bouquet of strawflowers, plumes from our tall grasses, and some broccoli flowers that are surprisingly unaffected by the frost. It was a last hurrah with the beauty and abundance that remain. We have three retreats to host in November, and then, like the trees shedding their leaves all around us, we will enter our rest period as well. The first frost is a turning point, Mother Nature reminding us that it is “time to get ready for bed.” We will savor this month as our five more minutes.