We’re having a glorious fall day that makes my reluctance to leave summer behind feel silly.
The sun is shining through a crisp refreshing breeze. I’ve had a walk, a casual lazy day walk. Bear droppings are everywhere. Hazelnuts are all cleaned up—birds and bears no doubt have helped. I missed my helping this year. Came home to gather my pumpkins and gourds. I always love this part of fall. What will I find beneath the straggling vines this year? There was a bumper crop of volunteers in the compost pile this summer. One was a big pumpkin. Unfortunately a wandering bear had some fun with it before abandoning it on the lawn…
But I was very pleased with the armloads of mixed cousins I discovered. And the gargantuan ribbed zucchini to top them all!
It was a good summer for volunteers. Had a bumper crop of small red potatoes but the ones that grew in the abandoned compost area were giants!
Likewise the sprawling nasturtiums…
This was my favorite this year:
Well, but summer is over with its swimming and boating, gardens and travel. In exchange there will be cozy treks in wool and windbreaker and the ever essential earwarmer. But best of all the delights of fall is the fire to come home to at trails’ end.
Every season has its glories– God bless the season you are in with His bounty and His comforts–the best is yet to come!
Tag: Autumn
All in a Day’s Walk…
Summer’s bounty is fading now. Blackberries that escaped bears and humankind hang shriveled on their brambles… Geese fly overhead morning and evening, restless…Pears and their peelings fill the compost, enticing bears…the hazelnuts are beginning to fall on the street just around the corner… The air is cooler and wetter and the skies are grayer. The sun sets earlier now. It’s inescapable–fall is on the way.
I generally have a hard time letting go of summer–the blue skies, sunny days, picnics, gardening… But the time has come. So I put on my comfy old sweatshirt and tried-and-true– though ugly– windbreaker and headed out for a walk. But you know, it wasn’t so bad. The moist cool air was actually invigorating to breathe deeply. And it triggered eagerness for a fresh season. So yes, I am reconciled to summer’s passing, at last.
Have to tell you what I saw on my walk this afternoon–two miles of nothing more eventful than a rustling in the roadside growth, to which I told Louie to “Speak!” and hastened on my way talking loudly to myself! Reciting my Bible memory work out loud suddenly seemed very sensible.
But then I got to the homestretch–back in our own neighborhood. I chanced to look up at an apple tree beside the street and got a ‘start’. What?! Big furry paws hung down through the branches.
There was something strange about them though, they looked limp, like maybe someone had shot the bear and left it there? Strange. I had to have a closer look.
Chuckle. How funny. I’ve heard of decoy ducks but bears! And what do you suppose was in the tree next to this one?
His twin, clambering up to get one last apple…
( : So my uneventful walk was saved from tedium by a good chuckle. Just never know what you’ll encounter in a day’s walk.
Hope your day will have some comic relief tossed in when you need it most. Blessings!
–Linda
Waiting in Hope
All the leaves are gone now. The stark skeletons stand with arms outstretched bracing for winter. I like to think of them living in hope of the spring to come–much as we do on those days when our bodies give notice that they are subject to decay… Reminds me of those verses in Romans about all creation groaning waiting for God’s children to be revealed ‘and even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us.’
Mind you I can be a little melodramatic. An ache or pain here or there sets me thinking I must have cancer or some permanent disability. Then it passes. Oh. But when all is not well in my physical world it does give opportunity to reflect on our true home and the temporary-ness of this one. And that’s a sweet hope.
I noticed this sweet little tree as if for the first time now that it’s reduced to its skeleton. What a shapely beauty. There’s substance there beneath all the frill of foliage. May that be true of me too. Under the surface of appearances, may there be substance to weather the winter and burst out in beautiful foliage come ‘spring’ ( :
“For our present troubles are quite small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us an immeasurably great glory that will last forever. So we don’t look at the troubles we can see right now; rather we look forward to what we have not yet seen. For the troubles we see will soon be over but the joys to come will last forever!”
Wow. That perspective just makes me smile inside. Hope it does the same for you!
–Linda
Romans 8:23; 2 Cor.4:17(NLT)