Tag Archives: autumn

Black Coffee and Pumpkin Butter

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , ,

Breakfast.  The most important meal of the day.

Joe brought me a present from his beautiful wife and my sweet sister-in-law (aka: Robin – sister of my heart) when we met in Springfield a few weeks ago.  She made me some perfectly earthy cinnamon and all the spices of autumn-seasoned pumpkin butter, beautifully presented in a prismed  jar.  She also sent some of her delicately tangy and ambrosial apple-pear jam.

Breakfast.  The most scrumptious meal of the day.

I brought them home and showed them off under the pretense of sharing, but I hide them in the refrigerator, moving them frequently, so that on early, dark  mornings I can toast some thick slices of multi-grain bread and have one of each: apple-pear jam and pumpkin butter (with real butter, of course…does that go without saying?).  And my black coffee.  My very dark, very strong black coffee.

Black coffee.

In my soul, I am Julie London and this is how I sing about black coffee (and anything I am really into).  Yeah.  That’s right, I am this passionate about black coffee.

A good start to my morning…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Call Robin because I am almost out of my delicate, almost-floral bread spreads.

Delicious Autumn

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
~George Eliot

I am visiting my parents in Springfield.

Two days ago I watched my backyard Aspens flutter dark green to yellow in one day.  I swear it.  The leaves were turning that fast, hourly lighter and brighter in color.  Today it is snowing in Denver, really snowing, they say.  By next week the naked branches, up to their knees in brown crunchiness, will glare at me as I attempt to rake up the once-glorious leafery.

But I?

I have chased autumn into a Missouri mood that lingers like musk on my skin.  I have escaped to turning-leaves on proud trees and the deep intensity of autumn colors that hold both the memory of exuberant youth with its’ fresh, green-spring growth, and the exploding red-to-the-core ripeness of the late summer tomato, now seasoned to a complex beauty, indisputably  richer and wiser for the aging.  The blazing urgency of the season, so much to experience before it all passes into winter, is salty on my tongue.  I inhale the cinnamon-scented air, and taste the pungent, spicy and intangible gift of the equinox while the crickets sing that haunting song I have always loved.

Burnt sienna and ochre rustle restlessly as autumn falls and the cool night air sprinkles wet diamonds onto my keyboard and into my mouth filling my lungs with cool, brisk air and enduring toasted warmth at once. Haley’s Comet spilled burning  meteor fragments in the wee hours,  punctuating the night sky with light, a spectacle for late-night lovers young and old. 

1890602012_d183a53af8

What is it about fall?  Not just nostalgia, so much sweeter.  Faded, yet more glorious.  Softer, yet stronger.  The taste? Lingering, commemorative, a celebration of all that has ever been with a watchful eye for all to come.  Delicious.

 I always hate to see summer end, yet the autumn is my life’s palette, the colors of my heart.  Even the heading at the top of this page gives ode to the falling leaf…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Grab the season with gusto, hold it close until the last leaf flies away.

pictured: a google image of Missouri and what I am surrounded by

September Garden

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , ,

“But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness.  The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head … The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on.”
–  Robert Finch

Pearl has beautifully cleaned her garden and cleared it away.  My cousins in the midwest, I have heard, have done the same.  But I always struggle to let go, to actually let summer pass into fall.

Early last week I thought the zucchini looked weak and perhaps were nearly “over,” so I watered them once more, gathering an arm-load of fruit, planning to uproot and end their time over the weekend.  The very next day, however, they were alive again with large yellow blooms, shouting their worth and prolonging their stay.

Some of the garden will make it through the cold.

But these cold days and cold, cold nights are going to do all the tender plants in.  Ultimately many of the flowers, including the petunias and nicotiana and zinnias, will make it through this frigid spell and will shine like stars in the universe in October as Monarch butterflies dance around them, captivating my fancy while I should be doing something productive.  And if I cover my tomatoes and peppers, which, of course, I will, they will suffer some, but keep producing – almost until Thanksgiving, the Lord willing and I remember to pay special attention.

Some of the garden won’t make it through the end of the week.

But the cucumbers, the zucchini and the spaghetti squash will likely not make it past this week.  Their tender leaves are taking a hit that will be irrepairable.  I have already pulled  most of the green beans. 

It’s so hard to say good-bye.

But it is hard to let them go.  It is difficult to watch the yard begin to retreat into its winter-ready clothes where once it danced merrily in dazzling color and sizzling heat.  It’s hard to hear the sound of dry, rustling leaves where children once splashed in water to the frog, toad and cricket’s song of the castinets.

The harvest is dwindling.

Today I brought in 2 armfuls of baby zucchini, lemon and English cukes and some other variety of cucumber.  I ate a couple of small beans right there amidst the soil and fading green.  I grabbed some huge, very happy-looking peppers (where a fridge full of their colorful cousins await being used), and I grabbed the reddish tomatoes, which are too soft inside to expose to such cold, but will continue their ripening on the counter and be delectable in the next 2-3 days.

This is the September garden.  It dwindles.

 

Wind

1 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , ,

Threatened by a forecast of freezing rain turning to snow, we are actually hosting a magnificent and sunny day fully lighting the multi-faceted palette and texture of fall.  Fluttering madly in the autumn breeze and dancing to the tune of the wind chime, the once-emerald leaves of the Aspen clump are becoming more golden by the hour.  The burning bushes are flaming as scarlet as they can be and potted flower heads are bowing in reverance to the power of the season as it blows by, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes as a roar.

Psalm 65.9  The Message
O, visit the earth – ask her to join the dance!
…fill the God-river with living water.  Paint the wheatfields golden.
Creation was made for this!
Drench the plowed fields, soak the dirt clods with rainfall…
Set the hills to dancing! dress the canyon walls with live sheep,
a drape of flax across the valleys!
Let them shout and shout and shout!  Oh, let them sing and sing!

 

 I am singing my head off to You, O Lord, and trying to sing as loud as the trees which are clapping their hands and the bushes which are dancing (the twist) for your pleasure.  You have made all of creation so holy, so set apart for Your glory.  Can I live my life as free, as abandoned? 

God and all He has created are glorious!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  See His glory.

October is Orange

1 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

October is pumpkins and spice, rustling leaves, brilliant carrots and abundant gourds and squash.  It is wool socks, leather shoes and a new pair of dark blue Levi’s.  October is tricks and treats, turtlenecks, Sunday suppers and chimnea fires.  It’s roasted seeds and amber and gold with browns and greens.  It’s spicy, cool mornings and indigo-dark skies.  It’s cinnamon rolls and fresh spicy pies.  It’s blazing color and fried green tomatoes, and caramel and taffy and apples, too.   But mostly, October is orange.

DECORATE WITH ORANGE. 

http://blogs.hgtv.com/hgtv/design/archives/2008/10/fall_into_orange.html

ORANGE (“the color of craving”) AS DESIGN PASSION. 

http://www.whorange.net/

 

1 Kings 8.65 The Message: …”This is how Solomon kept the great autumn feast…Two solid weeks of celebration!…”

 

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds  (modified from a recipe by Alison Aves)
In a 10″ x 15″ baking pan,
mix 2 cups unwashed* pumpkin seeds,
1 1/2 tablespoons melted butter,
1 1/4 teaspoons salt (use a seasoning salt, if desired) and
1 teaspoon (or more to taste…for me? always more) Worcestershire.
Spread seeds out in pan.
Bake in a 250-degree oven, stirring occasionally,
until browned and crisp (about 2 hours).
Serve warm or cool.
Thoroughly cooled seeds can be stored in an
airtight container for up to a week.

So-I am a summer-lover, but fall feels really romantic and lovely to me, too…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: October is also when I have been called for Jury Duty, too.  Poo.  Jury duty is NOT orange.

*Don’t worry – the orange slime from the pumkin that is still on the seeds will form a deliciously salty, crunchy coating on the seeds.

pictured: a deliciously orange google image-collage

Transition

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

I doubt it could be any more beautiful a day if I’d put in my very own order.  A warm, bright sun with the gentlest of breezes sweeping periodically through adorns my world.  The grass is brilliantly green, something you have to work for during the summer months, but comes easily these early fall days.  The tomato plants are loaded (I have a pan in the oven roasting as we speak – remember last year??)  and the annuals are enjoying a resurgance of color before their final farewell over the next few weeks. 

The sedum (from one near-dead clearance plant about 4 years ago) have gone from their hot-weather chartreuse to the light pink of a couple of weeks ago to a blazing cranberry, dotting the yard here and there in at least 12 places, growing ever larger and more glorious, the current social centers of the honey bees’ universe.

In between.

The disarray of the pool midway down, being dried and packed up for the year is rather unsightly and the shadows and sunlight dance differently now across the fences and gardens.  As the year has gone on, I have learned to let some weeds co-exist with desired produce and have let the grass enroach where I had earlier ordered it not to.

The shorter days are bringing into focus the beauty of each one, the fleeting nature of the minutes and hours that create the lives we are leading.

At 1:10 am yesterday morning, having just dozed off not long before, I was awakened abruptly and fully by an acute sense of my mortality.  At exactly 1:10 am, I realized I am closer to my death than to my birth.  I am past the middle, maybe way past.  Who knows?

I hope my colors are becoming more brilliant and more defined, less rigid and controlled.  I hope the shortened days bring more focus and appreciation for the beauty of each one.

Today she waxes melancholoy – as always, when autumn arrives…Jeanie

It has happened before… (melancholoy re: fall, I mean)…

pictured: google image, but not far from where I live