Changing Seasons

With the traditional close of summer last weekend and the official close only a week and a half away, people are starting to gear up for fall. Autumnal colors have cropped up in displays and advertisements, and Halloween accoutrement are beginning to appear in stores everywhere. Seasons are changing.

I know a lot of people are somewhat saddened by the passing of summer, especially those who have to go back to school and those who see fall as little more than a harbinger of another winter. But fall is my favorite season. It has been for as long as I can remember. Summer was always great – full of days spent in the sun and water, watching clouds and rolling in the grass – but autumn brought the year’s best weather and brightest colors. It meant going back to school and re-joining friends I had not seen all summer (and, yes, I was one of the few children who didn’t mind school). Fall also meant the sweets and candies of Halloween, the fantastic dishes of Thanksgiving (as well as the leftovers for the days that followed), and, if we were lucky, the first snow.

Now my point of view is different, but my enjoyment and excitement have hardly changed. Autumn contains the last opportunities given by the living seasons – begun in the first green shoots of spring and finished in the last colored leaves of fall. It is the last chance to get out there and shake a leg before the frosts become icicles hanging from the eaves and a howling winter wind drives us – and most other animals – inside for shelter and warmth. It is a celebration of life, of having survived thus far.

It is also a reminder that winter is just around the corner. It is a last chance to settle warm-weather affairs and prepare for the cold-weather challenges to come. It is a reminder that to all things there is a season, and that someday Death will nip us as easily as frost does flowers. It heralds an end of things, but also the hope of new beginnings, however far off they may seem. And what a way to go: all beauty and color and light before that last long darkness.

I love fall. I hope you will enjoy it as well.

Getting Baked

With this holiday season, I’ve spent roughly three weeks in front of a stove. That’s quite a bit, especially since many of the days involved cooking for eight to twelve hours. And I don’t even enjoy cooking. It’s hot, messy, repetitive, and requires a great deal of cleaning. So why bother?

Because it so happens my family enjoys the results. A lot. So when I’m elbow deep in a bowl fighting to blend in the last bit of flour, I think about how happy it will make them when it comes out of the oven warm and soft. When I’m washing that same cookie sheet for the tenth time today, I think about their smiles and “Mmm mmm mmm”s and keep scrubbing. Rolling out dough or greasing pans, basting or peeling, it is merely the means to an end.

A tasty, appreciated, wonderfully rewarding end.

Just focus on the goal and keep those cookies coming.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is coming a few days early but I’d like to wish everyone a lovely Thanksgiving holiday.  If you’re traveling, be safe and let the trip be half the fun.  Remember that patience is a virtue and the TSA agents are just doing their jobs.  If you’ll be spending the day alone, like myself, be thankful for the many good people who have touched your life and changed it for the better.  And remember that sometimes silence is golden.  Best wishes to all.

And courtesy of Flickr participants, a lovely mosaic: