Living. Lovely. ~ Celebrate Autumn

Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity;

but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance.

What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world

and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?


~Hal Borland




Bittersweet October.

The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.

~Carol Bishop Hipps In a Southern Garden, 1995




For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together.

For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.

~Edwin Way Teale

Did you

Celebrate Autumn

this week?

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Russ is on a roll this week. Sunday evening he took the boys up to the neighbor's orchard and picked me a huge basket of apples.
I've made a couple batches of applesauce with cinnamon and local honey. I adore the smell of simmering applesauce.

Russ also carved a pumpkin with the boys... which is the first time we've ever done that, amazingly!

It was a terrific boy project.

I got a pedicure, and picked out a lovely fall colored polish. Does that count?

I happen to think it was a most relaxing way to celebrate autumn. Grin.

Tonight, I'm off to our October ChocLit Guild meeting.

Talking about books (Jane Eyre in particular) while eating chocolate in the company of marvelous friends...
Yep. I'm celebrating.

Tomorrow, we are off to another pumpkin farm with cousin Ivy and our friends Christina and Jake.

Then we'll spend the evening at a costume party with our friends John, Char, McKinnon, and Monet.

I'm going to need a long nap after all this celebrating is over....

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Next week's Living. Lovely. challenge:

Find Unexpected or Out of Context Lovely.

My friend, Jodi, sent me a timely link to this blog post.

But if you have time, I urge you to read the Washington Times article, Pearls before Breakfast, in its entirety.

It is well worth your time. I particularly noticed this paragraph:

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

And because I adore finding connections (a la this post), Russ and I watched The Soloist recently and thought it was an excellent movie.