Boo to You, Too

Jack o' lantern from 2010 .

Very behind on Halloween this year.

Scrambled to assemble small bowl of candy for the lone trick-or-treater who might show up.

Pumpkins are sitting on the front steps, uncarved.

No time to make barmbrack, the traditional Irish yeasted raisin-studded bread that's also stippled with fortune-telling treats such as a silver coin and a ring.

No time to make the Halloween costume I'd thought up this time last year but did nothing about for the next 364 days.

No decorations. Not like in past years, when even the cats got into the spirit of things.

We did manage to stop at a pumpkin farm, though instead of scouring vast fields for Just the Right Pumpkin, indulging in hot apple cider, and then paying a buck to stuff a small pumpkin into a Pumpkin Cannon and send it flying hundreds of yards across a field and into a marsh, we spent just 10 minutes looking among a selection near the parking lot.

We used to pour a lot more energy into Halloween: there was all the excitement of helping our daughter put together a costume and showing up at the elementary school Halloween parade (I am astonished, but delighted, that the school was able to continue this tradition, as a hurricane of objections with winds blowing from vastly different ideological directions have caused it to be abolished in many places).

And twice we turned the basement into a haunted house, complete with a maze of paths, flickering lights, spooky noises, a bubbling cauldron, dry ice fog, and once, a computerized brain that answered kids' questions (the brain behind the creepy image being my brother's creative mind).


Oh well. My daughter has at least gotten into the Halloween spirit and went to school dressed as a cowgirl, wearing a white hat bordered with silver sequins. And Mother Nature has not stinted on seasonal decor.

A Halloween display of gourds at local supermarket

Local crows

Eerie moonlight

Big fat autumn garden spiders

Farewell to Fall

I know fall doesn't technically end until just a few days before Christmas, but the fall feeling has definitely already fled here. There are still quite a few blazingly beautiful maples and other trees lighting up the otherwise gray, damp days; many, however, have tossed their leaves, which are now looking less like vivid red and yellow carpets and more like old brown doormats that need to be raked up and composted, the sooner the better.

And it definitely smelled like snow the other morning, after several very cold days on which it seemed that the falling rain might verge into sleet at any moment.

I love the upcoming winter holidays, but I'll miss the beautiful warm colors of autumn.



The witch hazel out back is now the only shrub in the yard displaying glorious color. It's as if
it waited on purpose for all the other plants to shed their leaves so that it could show off all
by itself. Now if only it would flower in January like it's supposed to, and hasn't for years...



Luna the Lab displays her natural camouflaging properties amidst the last of the birch tree's fallen leaves.

Plenty of pumpkins...




...and gourd-geous gourds.



Upfall

Spring's got flowers, birds, and rebirth, and summer's got long, lazy, nostalgic days, but there's nothing like the snap and tang of a beautiful autumn day as crisp as a firm apple.

A friend once expressed astonishment that I actually liked fall. "All that death and decay!" she exclaimed in horror. But it just doesn't strike me that way. Maybe because getting into flannel pj's and settling in with a good book and a glass of wine on a chilly evening is so lovely, and the way the overwintering insects, other animals, and plants prepare to go to sleep for the winter seems so akin to that settling-in to me. Not like death at all.

And the excited chatter of the birds pausing to refuel in our trees sounds more like pre-vacation hubbub than the start of a forced march south.

As ever, this fall saw us trekking out to a pumpkin patch, where we took pictures that we've taken a zillion times before and will no doubt snap again in future.


It's a very, very sincere pumpkin patch.

 

Never noticed how much corn buttress roots look like dinosaur feet...



...nor how much a corn tassel looks like a hydra.



This year the pumpkin farm added an adorable horsy tractor-train--quite amusing to see it chugging across the field from far away; you could only see the horses' heads over the corn stalks.



Rose hips in hedgerow.



Another sure sign of autumn: the pumpkin cannon, which can hurl
a pumpkin across two fields and into a swamp.



Picture 2,412,693 of our paper birch in fall splendor against blue sky.



I know we're very safety-conscious in the USA,
but are falling leaves really that heavy?

Autumn also means maple pumpkin cupcakes from Cupcake Royale.
Nothing sad or decaying about that!