It’s Here Again!

It’s fall officially at our house when the wreath on the door changes, and the acorn people emerge from the cabinet where they patiently wait all year. Emily fished out the pumpkin spice candles for the end tables, so we are all set.

We had a nice period of cool, crisp weather here in SE Wisconsin, but the warmth is returning. Tomorrow, and we are supposed to be in the 80’s again. But the leaves in our neck of the woods are turning early. The route to Emily’s school was startling today with the leaves turning gold much earlier this year.

I’ll save pumpkin buying for porch decorations another week or two. I have to save something for later! Like a lot of people, this is my favorite time of year in our part of the country. It isn’t spring or summer that provide renewed vigor. It’s always this time of year that can’t be surpassed.

Each autumn, (this is my seventh year doing so!)  I post the recipe for my favorite spice cake.  It will make your home redolent with delicious aromas. It makes a really delicious, moist cake if you don’t over bake it!  Happy autumn, everyone!

When October Goes

October Fireside Notes

The smoke ascends to heaven as lightly
From a cottage hearth as from the haughty
Palace. He whose soul ponders this true
Equality may wall the fields of earth
With gratitude and hope.

~ Wordsworth, The Excursion

Oh, happy hearthstone! Oh, hour
thrice blest
Where peace is the handmaid, and
love is the guest.

~ Rose Elliot Smith

It was such a lovely weekend. The best weekends of all, for me, are spent pottering around the house, folding baskets of warm clothes  from the dryer, ironing Emmy’s school uniform blouses, shopping for groceries and spending evenings with Tom. Especially the evenings, talking with my husband.

Tom has a gap in music jobs right now, and the plus side is that he is able to do his own pottering around without the tyranny of an evening schedule. He painted the front hall this weekend. Only a couple  more rooms to go, and painting will be done. He takes his time, but when he is done, it is beautiful to see. He has an eye for the smallest detail.

It was a beautiful day yesterday. I took the longest walk yet all by myself when Tom and Emmy were gone for a while.  I ended up in the little German cemetery again. The play of light on the old stones and the seasonal changes to the trees make it the most peaceful place to wander around. Farther down the street there is a separate church cemetery with a black wrought iron fence surrounding it. The border of red Maple trees on the south end is so breathtakingly beautiful when the sun shines on them that it nearly takes my breath away. Em and I were driving home from school the other day, and the sun made the trees just glorious. “Praise you, God!” was all I could say. Em heard me, and now when she sees the trees, (they are losing the leaves but still have some of the beauties left hanging on them), she says the same thing from the back seat. “Praise you, God!” How wonderful that God left us so much beauty in a world that sin has so badly damaged.

My daughter-in-law, Laura, has been such a blessing and in many different ways. She is expecting our third grandbaby early next year, but took time to help alter Emmy’s frontier girl costume for school. The post office sorting machine ruined the first one we ordered, and the only one left was two sizes too big. Laura got out her sewing machine and in no time, she had it altered down to Emmy’s size. Emmy is looking forward to the Harvest Hoedown at school with a Davy Crockett theme. I’m grateful for Laura’s skill with sewing and willingness to help.

Thanksgiving is coming quickly. I heard about a looming pumpkin shortage, so I went and got some canned pumpkin just to make sure we won’t be without pie making material. Will is our biggest pumpkin pie fan, and he will be hoping for some. Speaking of Will, here he is on the organ with the Wheaton College Men’s Glee Club at their homecoming concert a few days ago. Jubilate Deo means, “Be joyful (jubilant) in the Lord!” (Psalm 100)

That Time of Year

Shakespeare’s words about autumn  were chilly, rather than warm, but it’s the beautiful and warm part of fall that I like to write about. I’ve already made apple crisp, pumpkin pie and my annual autumn spice cake (recipe below), and if I don’t stop, I’ll add five pounds from my culinary salute to the autumnal equinox.

Emmy, our sole little chick still in the nest, is looking forward to a trip to the orchard for apple picking and pumpkin buying. My sister-in-law put all of our family photos from a Sterilite bin into 8, sorted photo boxes. Looking through them the other day, I saw multiple photos of various years’ trips to the orchard/pumpkin farm with our five other children. Now we will soon have three grandchildren to enjoy the same.The speed of the passage of time continues to amaze.

Sammy, Charlie and baby Will back in the fall of 1997 in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Tom has planted two trees in our new yard. He chose birch trees, as he has at three other homes we have had. He always puts in a Schlueter tree. It’s a family tradition.

Speaking of tradition,  every autumn for years, I have put out my two Dollar Store acorn people. Last year, I looked all over, but couldn’t find them in their usual place. Sadly, they never made an appearance. I looked at the Dollar Store to find replacements, but there was nothing even similar to the little figurines I had. During our move this summer, I was happy to find my two little acorn people shoved back in our hutch in the dining room, and they are now back out on display along with my pumpkin spice candles.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot

Emmy is now happily in first grade, and I am deeply thankful to have her in a Christian school close by, the primary reason for our move. I see her copy work for school come home with hymns and verses to write. The other night, she was writing out this hymn:

How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.

It struck me again how wonderful it is to have a little academy where that name of Jesus, reviled spit upon all over the world, is still revered and loved.

I am loving the cool, crisp mornings and still warm afternoons, the fresh air, and the deep blue skies of a Wisconsin autumn. The world is in turmoil, the ground under our feet sometimes trembling, but this little blue planet still has beauty, because God, the Creator of all of it,  is in his heaven, and He holds all things in his hand.

I came across some beautiful fall barn photos in Country Living magazine online. If you’d like to see some breathtakingly colorful photos in the country, here you go at this link!

Also, I make an annual practice on this blog of posting the recipe to my autumn spice cake that I initially found in a cookbook from the First Baptist Church of Cook, Minnesota. Those Swedish ladies really knew their baking! So here it is, my favorite spice cake recipe, 2015!

Happy Autumn!

Little Mary and Sammy, back in 2001 at Nieman’s Orchard in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Under an Autumn Sky

In the grocery store parking lot where I was loading things into my cart I heard a voice behind me and realized I was being spoken to. A man in a wheel chair was there.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” he asked. He had strong muscles from wheeling his chair up the long hill to the store.

“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” I agreed. “I wish I had a way to store these days to get us through the long winter.”

He nodded, and we stood there just a few moments enjoying the fresh, cool breeze and the sun on our faces. We were two perfect strangers connecting as fellow humans, our souls drinking in the great beauty of the afternoon.

All the best rhapsodic prose about the Fall of the year has already been written many times over. But I was struck again today by the leaves changing color. Emmy and I walked along for our 3 mile walk, taking it all in.

There is something about being outside that makes Emmy think of God.

“He’s up there in the clouds,” she said solemnly as she walked along pushing her doll in her stroller.

“Who is?”

“God. Pastor told us about that in chapel,” she said firmly.

“God loves me, and I love Him,” she added. “He’s watching over me.”

We stopped to admire a maple leaf that Emmy observed was pink, not red. Bees buzzed over some droopy black-eyed susans at the corner where we turn. A neighbor waved cheerily at us as we made our way back home up the long hill.

“It’s such a lovely day, isn’t it?” Em sighed blissfully.

Beauty and truth and faith under a deep blue sky.

(Photo credit to my friend Francis MacDonald. This is a photo of his native Nova Scotia in autumn.)

Autumn’s Touch

The nights are suddenly chilly. Sweaters and warmer pajamas are being fished out of drawers. Today the air is crisp and cool, and the deep blue skies of autumn reign overhead.

Another summer is gone. The heat and humidity and drought that characterized those uncomfortable months have been replaced with gentle rains and cool breezes—marvelous sleeping weather without the artificial chill of air conditioning.

I sat one night in the dark with the open window near me. It was raining outside, and it was windy. The moist and chill air blew across my face, and it was refreshing and peaceful to feel a touch of the elements outside while dry and snug inside.

It isn’t very light anymore at 7pm. The darkness creeps in earlier and earlier in its autumnal encroachment. The lights are on now over the dinner table, and conversation revolves around school and homework. The tennis rackets, golf clubs and bikes on the porch wait for the weekend, or the weekend after that in some cases, as busy schedules leave less and less time for their use.

My children are growing (as kids are known to do.) This fall, Emily is losing the chubbiness of toddlerhood and her legs hang longer from her car seat and booster at the table. She is using bigger words, reasoning and holding conversations with the eternal question, “Why, Mama?” William is growing up, his thinking maturing. I listen to him talk with his father sometimes, and I realize how much of a wonderful young man he really is becoming. Mary is growing into a young lady. She knows her way around the kitchen like a pro, makes dinner, talks about her goals to be a graphic designer, and loves her small sister in that charming way older girls have with little girls. She has changed much since the last time the trees changed into their brilliant fall dress.

I have changed much also since the last time the leaves put on their autumn show. Another year older, God willing, another year more insightful, another year progressed on the path God has set for my life. I’ve stepped back into the field I know so well, working for a radio network 1200 miles away. Thanks to technology, I never have to leave home to do it. So the leaves begin their subtle transformation this year with new opportunity and blessings and challenges ahead.

This brisk weather is refreshing today, like the crunch of a good apple. Speaking of apples, I am entertaining visions of apple crisp. If I get busy, my two teenagers and beloved husband will be greeted with that wonderful aroma when they step over the threshold later after a day of hard work. The seasons may change, but the embrace of home upon their return stays the same.

Fall in the Mountains

The leaves are turning
The leaves are turning
The color of fire
The color of gold
And the mountain sleeps
With a hoary head
At the coming of the cold

The wood the wood
The ancient wood
The scent of smoke
The frosty leas
See the leaves dance
To a silent tune and
The whisperings of trees

~ Samuel Guzman

First Chill

The autumn equinox has passed, and frost delivers a visual sentence of death to summer. This morning the cattails in our bog were tinged with delicate, crunchy white. By noon all traces of frost were gone, but scars remain. Here and there the icy fingers seized a patch of grass, a cluster of goldenrod, a clump of purple wild aster, or a branch of red osier dogwood. Our herbs are seared and shriveled in their barrel containers.

Late September ushers in the glory days when earth spreads make-up on her face, like an aging woman hiding wrinkles in layers of glossy red. We love the glory days. After weeks of heat, we relish the invigorating chill compelling us to burrow into warm sweaters. Yet we celebrate these illusive moments of fading warmth, those final poignant remnants of a dying year.

~ Margaret Longenecker Been, A Time Under Heaven: Seasonal Reflections and Poems (Margaret is a dear friend and a Hope Blog reader.) Visit her beautiful blog, Northern Reflections.