I spent the better part of this week fighting off sickness part the second which means I had a lot of time to sit around and go through the pictures that had been piling up on my hard drive since May.
Which means I get to show you these – although they are twelve days to late and we are less than two weeks from Thanksgiving, I couldn’t let this pass by.
I’m usually pretty consistent (*cough* lazy *cough*) when it comes to decorating the house. Things get added gradually and I usually don’t change things around often. Even seasonal decorations are rare. I mean, Christmas is obvious but it’s usually the same setup every year. Halloween gets a few things tossed around but I don’t go big unless we’re having a party and we’ve only had one of those because it was a pain in the ass to plan and prepare for (I guess I probably could have not overdone it as much as I did!).
Regardless, things usually kind of stay the same around here. Except this year, I really wanted to get into the Autumn spirit because I was so excited about the season change. I was over the hot weather and the godawful humidity and I just woke up one weekend wanting to do everything Autumn and ended up going to the store and buying all sorts of decorations and then coming home and putting them up and making an apple crisp and then I was done.
But I am so in love with what I did and love that fact that they can last me through Thanksgiving. They make me smile every time I walk in my house. And I’ve also been lighting Autumn themed candles and put Leaves and Spiced Cider in my Wallflowers so the whole house always smells spicy and cinnamony and cozy.
Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
Even though the first day of Autumn was last Friday, it’s still been rather hot and muggy here in the Lowcountry. It actually rained all last weekend which was nice because I really could have used a gloomy rainy and chilly couple of days but while it was definitely the first two, it was no where the last since it was gross and sticky and just not like fall weather at all.
I keep hoping that if I wish hard enough, I’ll get the Autumn weather that I want. So, in order to work a bit of wish magic as well as prepare myself for our upcoming trip to Gatlinburg (where I will definitely get the fall weather for at least a week), I made a to-do list for the season, which is basically all of the things I want to do to really enjoy the weather and the feeling of this special time of year.