20191002 001044 3 minutes
Musings, Seasons, Hopeful, Optimism

That song has been on my mind all week
.
Today it’s trying hard to rain, or maybe it’s just low cloud.

Driving North on 9W from the Bear Mountain Bridge, the colors are gorgeous. The leaves are turning a couple of weeks’ early, but right now the countryside is ablaze with color. The first leaves to turn haven’t fallen yet and the later ones are still green, so there is a very full mosaic of colors to feast the eye.

Passing one of the houses the smell of pickling spices assault me. It puts me in mind of a warm, bright kitchen with a big pot bubbling on the stove, full of wonderful colors, tastes and smells. The jars are sterilized and sparkling clean, waiting to be filled with the hot brew. I think of my mother’s kitchen, full of produce waiting to be preserved, the wonderful colors and smells – and, of course, all the hard work it represented.

Fall is a wonderful time: gathering in the harvest before winter arrives, even when now it actually represents going to the farm and buying the produce. Or going to the store. For the past umpteen years I have driven to the farm upstate for my winter veggies. The drive is fabulous. I choose a beautiful day when the leaves are at their peak and drink in the colors

Memories are wrapped up and put away carefully, to be taken out and enjoyed during those horrid February storms, when the snow is swirling round the house and the wind is howling. That’s what pockets full of starlight and the wonderful colors of Fall are for: We can be sure that the bad times will end – even the dust bowl, the depression and WWII ended – and life will eventually return to normal and beauty will reassert itself.