hello fall

fall is my favorite season. there is something deep, deep in me which dusts off longings for home when the leaves start to turn. i'm not sure why colored leaves = home for me, especially since i grew up in coastal washington and then in montana, out in the woods with the conifers. whenever we would drive through town in september i would almost throw up in envy of the people who got to live in their two-story houses with their hardwood floors and the maple out front that carpeted the lawn and sidewalks with yellow. i ached to be one of those children who got to rake leaves into piles over and over for jumping in, so much so that i tried to one day with the teardrop leaves of our young birch, unknowingly mixing them with dog droppings for a nasty surprise.

did you ever have the fall you wanted? i haven't yet.

summer fading

what is your favorite part of summer?
in montana, we tend to say "the weather". this will last a week or so until people start complaining about the heat, the crowds at the lakes, the money spent on water to soak the garden and lawns. being from both arizona and montana, i tend to dismiss weather when i think of my summer love.
(yes, that is my fiancé with one of our chickens- nancy, the most brazen of them all.)

i love possibilities in summer. the idea that you can go outside at any moment. the new growth of things, which here doesn't begin until may. the perk in everyone's step. the hair let down, the clothes shed. fresh fruits and vegetables that taste like sunshine. summer is a period of growth. it is a time when, after long hibernation, our bodies become alive again under the sun.
in a month it will be fall. it is already winding down here. we got two months of sunshine. before that was snow. i am just grateful to have felt it at all. i will be living in a place where there is sun all the time, soon enough. for now i am savoring the smell of the warm pine needles in the sun.