Tag Archives: fall

A fall to remember

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    What a beautiful fall!  You just can’t beat the cool nights and warm days we’ve been having during the past month. It’s been even harder for me to be inside on days like this than it was during the summer, I guess because I know that colder days aren’t too far down the road.

     Speaking of down the road, I’ve been doing a lot of walking down ours with my daughter Ellen and her dog, Rosebud. Sometimes we also take Maggie, our yellow Lab with us. Usually Maggies goes running with my husband, Brian, but lately there have been a lot of farm trucks going by our house. We don’t trust Maggie’s judgement because sometimes she decides they’re fun to chase.

       Walking  with Ellen and the dogs is a great way to get a close look  the changing countryside; the corn that has turned from green to tan, the harvested bean fields that are now mostly black and the trees that are just beginning to turn from green to gold.

          The weather has been lovely for walking . My only challenge is to get home from work in time to do it before it gets dark. I may have to start walking before supper because it’s hard to get 30 minutes in afterwards. By the time my sons are home from football practice and we finish eating it’s often after 7 p.m. By 7:30 p.m., it’s pretty dark and the dogs become kind of a coyote magnet. I’d rather not have their company on our walks if I can avoid it.

October’s bright blue weather

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    When I was growing up, each fall my mom would talk about “October’s bright blue weather.” It made sense to me to refer to it that way because much of the time the skies were, indeed, a lovely blue during October. Meanwhile, the crisp air and falling leaves seemed to make the sky an even more vivid shade of blue.

   Today, I got to thinking about my mom’s oft-repeated line and wondered if it came from a poem.  An Internet search showed that it is the title of a poem and that the line is repeated several times throughout.  The first stanza of the poem, written by American novelist and poet Helen Hunt Jackson, goes likes this:

 O sun and skies and clouds of June
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather

    I have to agree with Jackson. A glorious October day like today beats out any June day. Maybe it’s not so much that the weather is nicer, but that there’s’ a greater urgency to enjoy it this time of year. I know the cold, damp days of November will be here all too soon and that sub-zero December days won’t be too far behind.

    The forecast promises a good dose of bright blue weather this weekend and I hope to spend a lot of time outside it.  This is a lovely time of year on our farmstead with the zinnias, cosmos and arigolds still blooming and bright leaves scattered across the lawn. I think decorating with some orange pumpkins and yellow corn stalks would complete the picture.