Ahhhhhhhhhtummmmmmm

Does the title of this post give you any idea of my favorite season? There's a spiciness in the air, the leaves are brilliant, hikes are breathtakingly beautiful, soup and bread can be on the menu every night, and we can do some yard cleanup with fire, which satisfies a certain pyromania of mine. I simply can not get enough of the sights, the smells, the feel, the experience of autumn.

And, of course, s'mores.  Here's our new twist on the classic:

  1. Roast marshmallow with a freshly carved stick.

2. Fill the center with a gob of Nutella. (We don't need no stinkin' knife!)

 


3. You can handle it from here. Jay cracked walnuts and tucked them inside--You can add your own innovations. Peanut butter is good--isn't everything with Nutella?

We roasted potatoes in the coals, poked some late-season lavender into a jar of tiny sea shells and arranged crazy curly-willow sticks and mountain ash loaded with its tiny orange berries in a vase to keep autumn just a little longer.

Two hikes this week took me above town and into the maples. Everyone we met seemed overwhelmed by the loveliness, fresh-faced and happy. Truly heaven on earth.

At the end of Mary Oliver's wonderful poem, "When
Death Comes," she expresses so well the way I feel, not just in autumn, but almost always:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~