Indian Summer

This farmhouse thermometer was a Tractor Supply Co. find years back.

We have had a beautiful, beautiful fall, one of the best we've had in a long time!

I think we've run out of our wonderful Indian Summer days, and boy were they ever something.  It was "a fall to remember".

Suddenly, the skies are steely grey, the wind has a colder bite, the outside world is not soft and green or even golden, because the heavy winds swooshed all that remained away and now the world is more stark.  Soon our velvety green carpet of grass will give up and go to sleep, too.

The farmers have all but finished cutting off all their beautiful, waving crops, and the fields look less now like a cozy quilt covering the earth, and the cold, brown dirt waits for its blanket of white....the hard-working, food-producing earth says it is ready for its season of sleep and is kindly turned over by the farmer and his plow for a long rest.

So now is time for the insides of our homes to become warmer, softer, more welcoming because the outside world decidedly is not.

We make comfort foods, light lamps, buy candles, pull out the quilts, and the flip flops get pushed to the back of the closet in favor of nubby socks and the closets changed from summer lightness to warm shoes, sweaters, jeans, and jackets.

We go now into the season where it is colorless outdoors and we have the holidays to look forward to -- it will bring colors into our homes and cheer us.  

Aren't you happy for the light and colors of the holidays?  I find myself looking forward to them as soon as our outside world turns brown.