autumn, colorado style

autumn, my favorite season of the year. after the play by day freedom of summer, it's a time for schedules to ease back into daily life bringing a comfortable order to things. the weather too moderates from intense to agreeable with breezy hints of what is to come. back in the day, i could feel my kids welcoming the season and the new school year with its ability to arrange sequence and structure to their days, heading them in a fresh, new direction.

this autumn photo journal post beginning with my blackberry harvest during the parching early september weeks, while paul floats in the stream, through the surprise visit of a confident, curious bear on the deck showing up only 10 feet away from me and paul, to the hefty snowstorm that arrived in early october, reminds me once again to live in the moment and savor the day as you never know what surprises, and at times disappointments, lie just ahead.

with the early, early snow, the leaves didn't truly get to show their colors, i went from wearing no shoes no sleeves to heavy coats and furry boots scrambling around for my favorite gloves (which i actually found only yesterday) and my car battery died in protest. as the cold snowstorm made its way to colorado, hoses and other garden equipment had to be left to weather it out as i quickly brushed through the herb garden cutting and bundling basil, thyme, oregano, parsley and cilantro to dry then found a pot to transplant the rosemary bush to set inside a sunny window enabling it to gift us with fresh seasonings through our winter. paul and i harvested-in-a-hurry the remaining garden vegetables putting a good-sized bushel of green tomatoes on baking sheets to turn as they shared the sunny windows with the rosemary. the squash, beans and last ears of corn were brought inside then we went ahead and dug up the remaining onions which i promptly braided and hung in the pantry (mom, look! thanks for the inspiration). last but not least were our pumpkins and as you can guess from the excessive number of portrait photos paul and i are very proud of our first pumpkin patch. we had so much fun watching a number of them grow and grow and grow! we are storing them all in the garage and have already and plan on continuing to use the cooking pumpkins to roast, bake and make into pies.

after the storm, which lasted a couple of days and the snow on the ground remained an unusually long time, we shook ourselves off and prepared for halloween. again, because i continued to be so proud of our pumpkins, i staged a photo shoot (oh brother, janet insert face with rolling eyes emoji) arranging the dried, spent cornstalks and pumpkins in a raised bed and waited for the evening light. happy, happy. i chose to carve the two biggest pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns scooping out bowls full of whatever the gooey, stringy, golden orange insides of pumpkins are called and collected and roasted too many pumpkin seeds for the two of us. i named the jack-o-lanterns paul and janet and set them out together on the porch swing like the two old, tired souls that we are, lighting them up from the inside to glowingly greet any trick or treaters that came our way.