Day 25:: 31 Day Writing Challenge:: Listing Saturday:: Why I Love Fall

1) The colors

2) The Contrast in colors

3) The cooling down of the weather

4) The knowledge that spring will come again.

5) Yellow, Red, Green all in one

6) Leaves that crunch on the ground

7) The smell of fireplaces burning

8) A chance to light the fireplace

9) Sleeping an hour longer

10) Lighting the firepot for a few precious hours outside

11) New jackets

12) Jeans

13) Sweaters

14) The warm weather following a killing frost

15) Flowers that survive a frost

What do you like best about the Fall?

So, it Begins:: 31 Days of Awesome! Today, the Simple Blessings

31 Days of Pure

 AWE-SOME-NESS!

I hope to share with you the PEOPLE & THINGS I think are::

AWESOME!

 

The Simple Blessings

 

"Even in the simple things, the blessings will blind us with their joy or be hidden from our sight.

We must choose to find them and be grateful for each blessing!"

Each morning brings new sights and sounds.  Each day brings a new beginning, a renewal.  What we didn't see yesterday, we can see today with the clarity of morning.  All we need to do is open our hearts to these blessings.  Even in our darkest times, a return to the simple, the ordinary frees us from the complications of our daily lives.  The simple awareness of the smell of a good cup of coffee, focusing on the taste of homemade jam or jelly or filling our lungs with the scent of the day:  these are the simple, ordinary blessings in our lives. 

Each blessing can be a fleeting moment to enjoy or an hour to savor.  Having time to spend with our families, our children, our friends, opens a door on to which we can cling or release.  Each moment in these specks of time can be frozen in our thoughts to reopen when the flowing waters of blessings seem distant and far away.  Not everyday can be a day full of overwhelming joy.  Life is not that way.  In each life, in each time, there is both joy and sadness, elation and disappointment.  Life is balanced.  There are mountains to climb that seem to reach into heaven.  There valleys so low that the human spirit is challenged to its limits.  Yet, even in the darkness, there is good.  The darkness which we feared becomes the sacred darkness of night that allows us to embrace that which we feared and rest in the softness of sleep, ready to restore and refresh us for the newborn day.   

When the ordinary becomes the blessed, then we can revel in the simple which opens our senses and our hearts to the day.  The burden becomes lighter.  We are able to travel further on less.  When a leaf on a tree makes us smile at the wonder of nature, then we begin to see the blessed in our days.  When we open our hearts to the ordinary, the simple becomes blessed.  The song of a bird, the fire of a sunset, the sigh of a child: each of these blesses us even on dark days.  As we open our eyes, we find the

AWESOMENESS 

that reminds us that our journey here is filled with more than we can hold in our thoughts, in our hearts, and in our desires.  Stop.  Breathe.  Then move on with your day. 

I challenge you!

Embrace the blessings you find.

Write down your blessings and savor the memories.

You will find yourself growing in 

GRATITUDE,

STRENGTH,

AND

COURAGE!

YOU WILL ALSO FIND THAT

YOU 

ARE

AWESOME!

"Every day might not be good, but every day has something good!"

Deb  Batten

 

 

A Quarter of a Century!

It was our dream house.  Nothing else I can say, except that it still is.

Today, I looked at this tree again.  It's not that red yet.  It's still green with a tinge of yellow, but 26 years ago, we moved into our dream house, this is the way our tree looked.  It was red, and it was beautiful!

What is even MORE AMAZING, is that I have lived in our home for longer than I lived in the home in which I grew up. 

I left my home town when I was 24, and I never been back there to live.  We left Chicago shortly after I turned 40, and we moved to Minnesota.  You don't have to do the math, I'll do it for you.

Next month, I'll be 66 years old.
66 - 40 = 26 years ago.  I keep saying this because I AM AMAZED that, as of this moment, I have lived in this home for a quarter of a century. 

My head is spinning at the math.  It's accurate. 

A. QUARTER. OF. A. CENTURY!

I am blessed!

Taste and see

Spring tastes of 

daisies and bees.

Summer tastes of

 picnics and fireworks.

Fall tastes of

 milkweed pods and sunflower seeds.

Winter tastes of

 family.

I love my year!

What a Rare Creature We Have in Our Midst

Here in Minnesota, we have a rare creature in our midst.

The technical name for this creature is
snowbirdis autumninus springus.
These birds, native to Minnesota and other cold states,
begin their annual migrations
just as the spring winds begin to blow
and when the warmth of summer ends.
They fly quickly across the country to warmer climates.
We, who live here through the cold winters, simply call them
SNOWBIRDS.
I just thought that you might like to meet a few of them.
One is already listed in my Etsy store.
I hope to get the others listed very soon.
This is our orangellis snowbirdellis springus and fallus.
We just call him Jake.
You can find Jake in my Etsy store if he doesn't decide to head south for the winter very soon.
I think he's found a bit of snow cover for now,
but I know he wants to be warm!

Now, this is Lulu. She's blue because she hasn't left yet, and she wants to get warm again.
I hope to get Lulu listed very soon in my Etsy store.
Keep your eyes open because she might fly away very quickly!
She's a blueellis snowbirdis autumnus springus.
She won't be back until the snow melts.

Homer wants to stick around until after Thanksgiving.
He's a bit warmer because he's encased.
However, the snow will make him long for the warmth of Florida, Arizona, New Mexico.
Well, you get the picture.
Homer will be in my store soon.
He's an
Amberellis snowbirdis autumnus springus.
Look for him soon in my Etsy store.
Now, I'm off to dream about the upcoming winter, and I'm imagining
tall coconut trees, a warm beach, white sands.

If you could fly like these snowbirds,
where would you fly to?
I'm seriously thinking
the ocean.
That would be nice!

Autumn Comes to Minnesota

It's Autumn.
It's Beautiful.
Take a look!
What do you think?




This is how it started.





















The leaves started to fall,
and
they were beautiful!


















These gorgeous apples
came into season.
Oh, they are so good!




















Even in the
cemeteries,
Autumn is showing..
Cemetery art
is
beautiful.




















The leaves are still falling,
but now
they are brown and crisp.
They crunch
under your feet.
They blow
in the
wind.

















Even now,
there are still
a lot of leaves
to enjoy
and rake.
Soon it will be winter,
but I have loved this
autumn.

Signs of Fall

The signs of fall are starting to appear.

The roses are forming rose hips.



























The garden are mature! Look at this tomato plant!
Soon it will be time to harvest those delicious tomatoes.


















More pods! The milkweed plant, which when in bloom attracts butterflies, is mature. Look at those gorgeous pods!

























The brown eyed Susans are blooming. I love these flowers!














The evergreens have pods, too!

Fall will soon be here!

At last! It really is fall!

It was a long, hard summer.
I'm really glad it's over.
Winter almost came way too early,
but now,
We're back to fall.
Colors that didn't exist yesterday
were sprayed on the trees
to make the leaves
a blend of maleable gold and rust
with speckles of green.
Winter is a peek around the corner,
but, no matter what,
We are headed towards spring!

Oh, Oh! Is it really Happening Already?

I looked out in the ravine today. Look what I saw!


















I'm not a fan of the summer heat and humidity, but I think it's a little too early to see the leaves starting to turn yellow!





















I looked a little to my left. More of the same!





















I looked to my right. It's there, too!
It's been a nice summer, and fall will be nice, but winter is close behind.

The Perfect Garden

When you live in Minnesota, you expect a long winter, a short fall, a very short spring, and a medium length summer. Usually, at the first sign of a warm day, the true gardeners are outside raking and cleaning up the gardens to get ready for the first planting, the first tulip, the first day when they can be outside puttering in their beautiful gardens. I am not one of those gardeners. I'd be happy just watching my garden grow from afar.

Knowing this, I had to ask myself, what would be the perfect garden for me. Here are pictures of my garden as it looks right now.



In my perfect garden, there would be flowers blooming all the time--even in winter. Winter would not kill the perfect rosebush or make it go dormant. Flowers would bloom all year long.


















Some bushes and plants would have two different types of flowers on them. They would bloom profusely and never go dormant.



















This rosebush, which has been in the same place in the garden for over 20 years, would bloom profusely. In the twenty years it has been here, it has bloomed only one time, and that was for my daughter's graduation. The flowers were bountiful and fragrant. Since then, the rosebush has not bloomed again.



















My beautiful little herb garden would never need weeding. (Actually, none of my garden would ever need weeding!) The herbs would overflow with their pungent fragrances and taste. Now, that would be awesome!

The perfect garden would also have the perfect gardener. That would be Raul with his shirtless body steaming in the sun. His muscles rippling as he plunged the shovel into the garden----Wait!



Wrong fantasy! Oh, well, at least you know what my perfect garden would be like!