Jerusalem artichokes

I just got back to the house after helping all afternoon to set up an art show in a lovely little north central Massachusetts town. I had no idea setting up an art show could take so much work but I feel more connected now in some ways. We took twelve reeeally heavy panels out if the town barn and put them in a pickup truck and then carried them downstairs and set them up on big metal posts and a few smaller metal beams. We made enough space in one room to display the 130 or so works of art to be displayed at the show tomorrow which is happening as part of the annual cracker fesitival which is apparently at least partly about beer. Looking it up online it even has an honourary king and queen and children are invited to dress up as princes and princes. Karen’s house is a perfect peaceful colonial house from the 1760s. I remembered I love being in old houses and I started thinking it might be nice to settle down somewhere I can have my own little kitchen with jars of cinnamon sticks and apple cider in the fridge. The foliage on the drive to the northern part of the state was gorgeous, so much more vibrant than I have seen in the city. The house is also one of the most peaceful places to look around from outside, has that country town kind of feel, which on a fall like today is glorious, even if it is raining, because it is fall, and fall days are beautiful even when it rains. (I started reading the classic 1937 story How Will You Live by Genzaburo Yoshino in English translation and I do believe I am going to fall in love with Japanese literature.) Before setting up for the show I dug up some Jerusalem artichokes with a pitchfork but I probably could have just uprooted them with my fists. I remember them having really huge tubers when I last dug them up in Michigan but there were only a few really really tiny ones. All that terrain and vertical space taken up for that? She said it was the first time she planted them and she isn’t planning on doing it again. If I go to Latin America I think I will feel restless for New England fall but I am here now in this moment when it is fall in New England and I always feel restless. There is no helping me. Latin America makes me happy but does every dream followed have some kind of price? The idea of being away from these northern rural and country town landscapes which I love most of all in the fall makes me sad.