Category: Everything Else

Live in each season as it passes;
breathe the air,
drink the drink,
taste the fruit,
and resign yourself to the influences of each.

Let these be your only diet-drink
and botanical medicines.

-Henry David Thoreau

Fall: it really is intoxicating, isn’t it?

I keep taking big breaths of the cool air, as if purifying my soul.
I know that sounds exceedingly New Age and corny, but it can’t be helped. I drink in that air as though my well were dry. I can’t get enough of it. Air that is crisp and full and quenching in some way unlike the thin air of summer.

I am hoping to get out tomorrow and do some apple picking!
The Honeycrisps are ready for plucking.

Apple crisp, apple cider, applesauce….
Pancakes topped with baked apple and cinnamon…
Oatmeal with apples and brown sugar.
A house warmed and cheery with the scent of apples.

I can’t wait.

Another glorious day
in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed
and sent pulsing onward we know not where.

Life seems neither long nor short,
and we take no more heed to save time or make haste
than do the trees and stars.

This is true freedom,
a good practical sort of immortality.

-John Muir

I love, love, love John Muir and his indefatigable zest for life. And when I set out into a morning like this one- the air cool and scrubbed clean, the sun so bright and cheery- I can’t help but think of him and think, to John Muir all moments were as lovely and fresh and clear as this one.

What a wonderful life to live.

Am I the only one who so often sees the world through another’s eyes?
Whose words, actions, views, color the way you look at life?

June, July, August and September
is the season of rest and sleep,-
a winter of dry heat….

In these balmy, dissolving days when the deep heart-beats of Nature are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything alike, common business and friends are easily forgotten.

-John Muir

This bug is a Dogday Harvestfly, a cicada that appears in the “dog days” of summer, with a call that sounds like a “circular saw cutting through a block of wood”.

I’ve been kind of sitting on the picture waiting for another period of warm weather, a run of dog days that would make the quotes above appropriate, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

I think autumn is here, friends. I’m not ready. I just didn’t get enough summer; not enough of those super hot, humid dog days, that make me greet a chill in the air with a sigh of relief.

How about you? Are you ready for fall?
Or are you like me, hoping for an extended Indian summer?