The Sweetness of Autumn

 Well, it is official.   Summer 2013 has come and gone.   It's time to embrace one of the most glorious seasons.   Autumn is such a beautiful time of year and doesn't last long enough for me.   I love the cool weather, the colorful trees, picking out pumpkins and gourds and bright mums, making a big pot of soup or better yet, a succulent pork roast stabbed with cloves of garlic, roasting on a Sunday afternoon, with a pan of acorn squash baking right next to it.  The acorn squash has to be made with a huge pat of butter, dark brown sugar and a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon.   Add homemade mashed potatoes and pork gravy and you have a heavenly fall Sunday dinner.    Baked apples or a pumpkin pie for dessert makes the dinner complete.

 This fall, go out and support our hard working local farmers by purchasing their pumpkins, corn stalks,gourds and mums and decorate your home accordingly for the season.  Watch for things along the roadside to add to your outdoor decor like cattails which are in abundance right now and bright green osage oranges, free for the taking along any country road.   They look beautiful when placed with pumpkins, all lumpy and green, much like a gourd.  I've enjoyed decorating for fall since I was very young.   When I was still living at home, I would always take my mom to our favorite garden market and purchase stalks of corn and huge pumpkins which we displayed for the neighborhood to enjoy.

If you're lucky enough to have a lot of trees on your property, you also get to enjoy the crunch of their leaves on your lawn.   My parents house had three huge maples in the backyard and it was a tradition to rake them into a huge pile, running and jumping and burying ourselves.   Crazy fun and once we tired of the pile, we would burn the leaves which smelled wonderful to me back then.   I know it's environmentally incorrect to burn them now, but I miss that scent from childhood.  Every now and then, when we're driving in the country, you'll smell someone who still burns them and the odor takes you back to when you were a kid.   So eat, decorate and take in the wonderful colors of the season.   Before you know it, branches will be bare and a blanket of snow will be covering the land.   Embrace Autumn and all the wonderful things it brings!