Fall at My House

Summer is my favorite season. It always has been and I never realized it wasn't everyone's favorite season until recent years. 

My second favorite is autumn, tying with spring. 😄 But really, I do enjoy fall when the weather is summery. Recently I saw the question on social media, "What is your favorite time of year for decorating?" Most people say Christmas but after some thought I have to say it's autumn for me. I have a lot of issues with Christmas, unfortunately, so I can't say it's always so wonderful.

In the fall I get to make flower arrangements with the blooms that come late in the year- Rudbeckia, dahlias, asters and anemones. I have been growing my own decorative pumpkins for several years now, giving room to them from the space previously given only to edibles. I had a wonderful harvest of pumpkins this year. Growing one's own decorative items makes decorating more fun.

This is the current arrangement I have, sadly fading, that was made from the very last flowers I could find the day of our first hard frost last week.

This arrangement was from the previous week, made from some of the last blooming dahlias. I was very satisfied with how this fall proceeded without frost. I was able to enjoy every last dahlia to the end.

I had a large harvest of these little pumpkin gourds so they decorate everything. I've had  enough to share even though I only planted one plant.

I love decorating my porch at all times of the year. I moved planters into the house so the porch looks bare to me but the pumpkins look nice. The larger pumpkins are "Cinderella's Coach" and have that flattened, curvy, fairytale look. 

This little pumpkin helped me pick the dahlias when she was here for her birthday.

The roses had one last Hurrah in October so I had one final arrangement to enjoy.

With the long spell of warm weather my garden harvest went on and on. 

The freezer and larder are stocked for winter.

I was especially blessed to have every single tomato ripen for harvest. None were wasted by frost.

Homemade tomato soup for cold winter days.

I have four more heads of buttercrunch lettuce under protection in the raised bed. 

It will be special to eat fresh garden lettuce in November! And look! No bugs or birds after it.

On a beautiful sunny autumn day I dug my dahlias to store for winter and gathered seed to save for next spring's planting.

This poem was messaged to me today from my grandchildren's other grandma who is also a gardener. 

It seems fitting to share here.

In fall

the garden is spent

having given its all.

Cucumber vines lie exhausted on the ground

Tomato plants list to one side

Cornstalks stand dignified and empty

Sunflower faces droop earthward,

shades of their former selves.

All that has not been claimed lies moldering in the dirt—

a bruised tomato, a forsaken pepper…

a misshapen pumpkin, a trampled stalk of beans.

What came from the earth is returning

to the place from whence it came.

There is an intimacy here,

in the fall garden,

gazing at living things in their demise.

I want to avert my eyes, avoid this tender grief.

Is this life or is this death? I cannot tell.

Ah, but there is beauty here

amid all this death and dying.

To have given one’s self fully

at least once

that is the thing.

To have spent oneself in an explosion of color

to have offered one’s seed for food,

one’s very self for nourishment…

It is an unseemly generosity,

beauty of another kind.

In fall the garden says,

“This is my life, given for you.”

And we are fed.