The world's oldest performance art!

               

Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.  

          ~Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

Every season has its merits. Winter brings quiet, a tendancy to stay home and hibernate. Rest. Snow, while often difficult to deal with, is beautiful. Playful sometimes! Spring brings warmer weather, flowers, and some color and beauty back to us.  It can mean the work of beginning a garden. Summer means long days, hot weather, and activity. But for me, it is the autumn I love best. For a few short weeks Nature puts on a show of color that is breathtakingly beautiful. Cooler weather makes us feel frisky again-- just walking when it is brisk and beautiful can make me happy.

Autumn does have it's own celebrations too... fall festivals, the foods we eat, cider to drink. The smells...  of cinnamon or a fire burning. I love it all!

This fall we have taken several short trips in the car. It has taken us out into the countryside of Indiana and Ohio, where fall also means lots of hard work harvesting the corn and beans. Yesterday we saw up close the labor that goes into harvesting a field of soybeans. The dust, the noise, the farmers who were working the machinery. It reminded me that besides all the beauty of fall foliage comes a lot of hard work. And while autumn is fleeting, I imagine winter can't come soon enough for some of these extremely hard working people.

My hope is that everyone enjoys the season-- whether it is by taking drives out into the countryside, working the fields or just taking a walk on a brisk morning. Get out there and be a part of that "last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter!"