Fruit Fly Village

I suppose by now, if you’ve been reading my recent string of tales, you know that every morning, I take the black dog on an unvarying route down the lane, past the farms and towards the pastures and mountains at the back of our property.

By taking this very same walk each day, I’m tuning myself into the tiny, incremental daily changes that happen, as the seasons roll, from one into the next. Every day, there is a shift.

It’s cooler this morning as I meander. The sun is still lingering behind the mountain and mists lie low over the fields. Each leaf and petal has drip hanging on its tip. The air is cool and moist; the birds are squeaking in loosely-flying flocks and the grass makes juicy squishes underfoot. Dandelions ... their fluff heads looking wet and clumpy ... have had their morning dew-shower and are not yet blown dry. Cheeky Stellar’s Jays are stealing nuts and shrieking their nut-news to their accomplices in the other hazelnuts trees. ( Jays are always ‘cheeky’ regardless of what they’re doing)

... It’s Fall! .... I’m thinking.

And then, all of a sudden, the sun heaves itself over the mountain top and flings its strength widely down, and through, the valley. The mists gather up their skirts in haste and run for the hills. Instant warmth promises later heat. It’s summer, back again.

Yesterday had turned into a hot day, too. I noticed a hot-day buzzing noise as I was tiling in my new house. I’m working on laying out a pattern of river pebbles and stone tiles on the expanse of kitchen floor, ready to transfer onto the walls around my bathtub. An inordinate number of houseflies had made it into my living room ... and why wouldn’t they want to come into my beautiful space when I leave all the doors and windows wide open? They’re making a big racket against the glass. I open the window and they evaporate.

(Speaking of flies evaporating ... Have you noticed how fruit flies do the opposite? They expand into huge realms by spontaneous generation. Half a dozen flew out of my fridge this morning. I have fruit flies in my cutlery drawer.)

As I’m letting the flies out the window, I can see one of our farmers, from my lofty height. He’s in his field down below, gently tossing rye seed in a wide-sided basket and letting the wind blow the chaff off. I’m imagining that the sound is taking a little longer to reach me.

The whole farm is spread out around me and the folks are busy ant-people ... each, oblivious to the others. A gardener has her summer sun hat on and is bending over tending her vegetables in her community garden patch.

One of the workmen is barrowing construction supplies past the silo building and the dirt mountain the children play on.

Now, the farmer is doing something else ... pulling out some squash plants?

We have people here now, getting on and doing the things people do.

Living.

I take a tour through the farm to see who’s here. Our elder is heading over to the office with a sheaf of papers and books tucked under her arm and the key dangling from her fingers.

She doesn’t see me.

There’s some hammering.

One of our hands-on people is putting an extra window into the shed where he’s setting up his cabinet-making business.

Around the other side, a mum is tucking her kids into their van to take one of them to soccer practice.

A couple of the men are splitting wood at the front where we’d had some trees taken down, to make way for power lines. I can see their sweat from here ... I can almost smell how hard they’re chopping.

And just as I can’t be sure whether it’s fall or summer, I can’t tell you whether our Ecovillage is still in its forming, pioneering stage, or it’s made it over the mountain ridge and is shining as a settling, consolidating village. Are we there yet, I wonder?

The seasons are a certainty in how they come. Always fall after winter. Fruit flies come with bananas and stay with plums. Wasps hover around the edge of the roof where their nests are, and cruise in through open windows. The sunshine turns golden and softer.

Humans in villages aren’t so certain.

The Chinese have a special season they insert at this time of the year, that is about ripening fruit, consolidating plenty and sharing abundance. I would call it “Fruit Fly” season, if I didn’t think they’d mind ... the Chinese, I mean. Fruit flies are about all those things, but are too busy being fruit flies, to care what I call their season. And maybe our villagers are too busy too, to be pondering what our village will be in the future.

They just are. And the village just is.

And that’s perfect.