First Day of Autumn

Autumn officially kicks off on Saturday September 22^nd!  The first thing that comes to mind when I think of autumn is apples.

The scent of a cinnamon apple pie baking in the oven.  School trips to apple orchards.  Apple jelly, apple butter, apple-cider donuts—Lord, if you haven’t had one of these, you need to get to your nearest apple orchard ASAP and try one.

Edwards Orchard, Poplar, IL

 

Before I moved from the Chicago suburbs to Phoenix, my former high-school friends and I met at the Edwards Orchards in Poplar Grove, Illinois, for an afternoon of apple-shopping fun.

We strolled through the over 100-year-old dairy barn that had been converted into a gift shop.  Everything you can imagine made from an apple or having a picture of an apple on it could be found in this barn.  Cosmetics, dishes, souvenirs, candles, salsas, linens and hundreds of other gifts.  We purchased our cider-apple donuts and watched young girls make the donuts in the barn kitchen then we checked out the hayloft and the display of farm antiques before eating lunch at a local café.

Each September I feel a little nostalgic as I remember that visit to the apple farm.  But it's also a time for me to celebrate friendships.  Whenever I eat an apple-cider donut, I remind myself how blessed I am to have been able to maintain a friendship for over thirty years with the girls I went to high school with. 

What do you do to celebrate the changing of summer to fall where you live?    

 

Happy Ever After...The Cowboy Way!

 

Marin

A Cowboy's Duty *Rodeo Rebels* 8/2012

Beau: Cowboy Protector *Harst fo the Rodeo* 11/2012

No Ordinary Cowboy *Rodeo Rebels* 4/2013

www.marinthomas.com

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Fall Quick Five

Quick, give me your five favorite things about fall. To give you some ideas, here are my five.

1. Perfect temperatures. When the temps are between 65 and 75 with clear, sunny skies, it's perfect weather for outside activities, whether that's going for a hike in the woods or doing yard work.

2. Harvest festivals. When I worked for newspapers and magazines, I covered a lot of harvest type festivals. I loved the walk through yesteryear filled with blacksmiths, women cooking on wood-burning stoves, harvesting crops, the making of beeswax candles and cornshuck dolls.

3. The smell of the woods with the leaves falling and even the smell of fires if the smoke isn't too strong.

4. The color of the fall leaves. My favorites are the orange and yellow ones.

5. Pumpkin-flavored treats, particularly pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread.

Okay, your turn!

Seasons Changing and So Do We

While the temps have just begun to reflect the change from summer to fall, the last few days are hinting that winter isn't far off. I don't mind the cooler weather and am happy to have turned off the AC.  After surviving far too many recording breaking days of 100+, anything under 80 feels like heaven.  But the newest addition to our family isn't very happy.

Toby, a 2 1/2 year old gray cat, came into our lives a month ago.  Several times throughout the year, when the cat population becomes too high, our local Humane Society gives away free kittens and cats.  I hadn't intended to take a new pet home, but out of curiosity we decided to see what was available at the latest give-away.  After getting a number and walking through the crowd of people hoping to adopt a new pet, my youngest daughter and I weren't able to tear ourselves away, even though we were told that it was entirely possible there wouldn't be any kitties left by the time our number was called.  As it turned out, Toby, who was being fostered by one of the employees and wasn't in the facility at the time, was the last cat available at the end of our four hour visit.  We took him in a heartbeat.

Toby's description mentioned that he was a great personal assistant, and he's already proved that to be true.  His favorite spot to snooze quickly became the window that overlooks over my desk.  This was fine with me, until the temps started to dip into the low 50s at night, and the daytime temps stopped reaching 75.  To Toby's utter disgust, the window had to be closed.  All the windows had to be closed.  So now when he discovers that his favorite sleeping spot will no longer accommodate his bigness, he gives up and settles for the top of my desk.  At 34 inches stretched out from head to tip of tail, that's more than half of my desk, and I've spent quite a lot of time moving him so I can see the bottom of my computer screen.  He still doesn't understand that assisting doesn't mean keeping me from working.

We're happy that, instead of a tiny kitten that would have needed training, we found Toby.  Or he found us.  It appears that he and I will be enjoying the changes of the seasons together.  I'm already curious to see what he thinks of the view out the window when the snow begins to fall.

Autumn Harvest

The arrival of autumn always makes me a little nostalgic for summer, but there are things I love about it, too. The crisp morning air, the fall colour—which we get a taste of, even here in the Pacific Northwest—but most of all I love fall produce. Apples are ripening on the trees, pumpkin patches are bright orange, and the farmers’ markets are brimming with cabbages and corn.

This year my daughter and I decided to try our hand at canning tomatoes. Those are the only things I buy in cans—everything else we eat is fresh and made from scratch—but as a two-time cancer survivor I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the carcinogenic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) found in the lining of almost all food cans.

So last weekend I purchased 35 pounds of tomatoes from a local organic farmer, borrowed my neighbor’s canning pot, bought two dozen jars with lids and rings, and looked up “how to can tomatoes” on the Internet. The printable PDF file on this site is easy to follow and includes great illustrations.

On Sunday afternoon my daughter and I rolled up our sleeves and got to work. The job turned out to be a lot less work and a lot more fun than we expected. Three hours later we were admiring the fruits of our labor—sixteen quarts of tomatoes, chemical free and no salt added.

The only thing we couldn’t figure out was why on earth we weren’t doing this years ago.

Do you have a fall favorite? What about canning tips? Please share!

Until next time,
Lee
The Christmas Secret
November 1, 2011
www.leemckenzie.com

Back-to-School Celebration!

All around the country, our kids are back in school again. By this time—hopefully!—the students are settled into the routines of their new grade levels and the teachers have survived the new-school-year chaos. And it is chaos. I know too many teachers not to realize that!

Even a couple of my heroines are teachers. Kerry Anne MacBride, from FAMILY MATTERS, teaches high-school art classes. Kayla Ward, from A RANCHER’S PRIDE, teaches American Sign Language.

Of course, for the most part, it’s not the teachers or kids who are celebrating the start of the school year, but the parents. LOL

I’ve always been a student and probably always will be. There’s so much to learn in this great, big world—something as kids we don’t always appreciate.

But even as an elementary-school student, I looked forward to going back to school in the fall.

Did you?

There’s so much going on at the start of a new year. New teacher, classroom, textbooks. New classmates. New clothes! :-)

To this day, I get most excited over brand-new, never-been-cracked-open notebooks and an array of brightly colored pencils and pens. (I guess I was always meant to be a writer.)

How about you? What are your favorite items—or memories—from your first days back in school?


All my best to you,

Barbara

~~~~~~

Barbara White Daille
http://www.barbarawhitedaille.com

I Think We're in Kansas, Toto

When storms come rumbling, we pay attention in Kansas, meaning it's time to turn on the weather radio for watches and warnings, switch on the TV to see the radar, and tune the radio to one of the local stations to hear the weather spotters.  That's what we were doing Wednesday when storms crossed through the area.  When all was said and done, nine tornadoes had flirted with the area, and possibly the largest hailstone on record (7.75") had fallen.

My oldest granddaughter was here after school with my youngest daughter and myself, waiting for her mom (my oldest) to finish her visit to the YMCA after work.  We were all keeping an eye on the sky as reports came in that baseball-sized hail was being reported to the northwest of us and was headed our way.  We had hail, mostly pea-sized, for a while, then it stopped and rained.  And rained.  Then the hail picked up again, a little bigger this time.  Suddenly, we heard the announcement on the radios that we were under a tornado warning and should take cover.  At the same time, my oldest daughter called and said to get to her house.  She was on her way there and would meet us.

The tornado sirens blared around us as I drove the three of us the three blocks to my daughter's house, while nickel-sized hail pounded the car.  I prayed the very cracked windshield (compliments of my oldest grandson, a metal toy car, and a rock) would hold up against the onslaught.  If it wasn't for the fact that I don't have a basement, but my daughter does, we'd have stayed home.  For the next twenty minutes, we watched the hail from inside her house, as it went from marble and nickel size to golf ball size, and finally to billiard ball size.  The first photo above was taken after being rained on for ten minutes, while we debated who would go out to retrieve some to keep.  The photo above and to the right is what had earlier hit the airport, where my daughter's husband works.  It was a bit bigger!

We're all thankful that damage from the storms wasn't severe, but the insurance companies will be busy assessing dimpled cars and broken car windows, along with battered roofs.  Ah, yes, it's Kansas in spring autumn!

Hairstylists

It seems like I go from good to bad to worse with hairdressers. I yearn for the days when I was young and wore my hair all one length and halfway down my back. The "usual" cut was two inches off the ends and I was good to go.

Now that I'm older and can't get away with wearing my hair like a sixteen-year-old and finding a hairdresser who "gets" my hair is next to impossible. I've got a ton of hair—yeah, it's great that I'll never have to worry about being a bald granny some day, but my hair is slightly wavy and coarse. (I compare it to a horse's mane) This means if I want to wear the sleek look I have to spend way too much time with a round brush and a blower dryer to tame it. If I put curl gel in my hair and let it air dry it's not quite the "cute" curly look I'm trying to achieve so I'm forced to use a curling iron. I really envy women who have hairstyles that wash and wear without a lot of fuss. And the older I get the less time I want to spend fussing over hair and makeup in front of the mirror.

A few months ago I bit the bullet and tried a new stylist recommended by a friend. Afraid of being butchered, I said "nothing drastic, just a trim please." She looked at my hair, ran her fingers through it and said "whoever cut your layers last time did it all wrong. It will take two haircuts to get your hair where it should be." Oh, boy did that make me nervous. But she reassured me she wouldn’t cut too much hair off and she didn't.

Two days ago I went back for the second cut and the stylist announced that my hair was now "fixed". And she was right. The curl held better and it was it looked better. Then she announced her husband was getting a new job and they'd be moving out of the area. Just great.

She recommended one of the other women in the salon to me and brought her over to the chair to explain to the lady how she cut my hair. I appreciated that but I kept thinking—I'm back to square one. Oh, well, in eight weeks I'll return to the salon, give the new stylist a try and see what happens.

Anyone else struggle to find a hairdresser who understands their hair?

Marin

Dexter: Honorable Cowboy (July 2010)

RT Top Pick

http://www.marinthomas.com/