Autumn Arrives

It's high time that Autumn arrived in Atlanta! It felt wonderful with 50 degrees this morning, especially after being in Alabama, Mississippi and New York with so much heat and humidity.

This is my front door wreath that I hung the first week in September while I waited for signs of fall. It's my favorite time of year.

Our leaves have barely started to change but with the cool nights ahead it won't be long now, and I will be inspired once again on my morning walks. These are the days of homemade soup, sweathers, caramels and candy corn, and great coffee on the patio, while listening to the wind blowing through my trees and the sweet birds singing their lovely music for my enjoyment and of course, a good book to read.

It's also a time of rememberence for me. My mother loved fall and she often visited me in October. I would take her to Garden Ridge and she would snap up as much fall foliage that our cart would hold to take back to her tiny apartment for floral arrangements. I can almost smell her chicken and dumplings that we insisted she make and her tea cakes, our family favorite. Mama had a sweet tooth and when we made afternoon coffee, she had to had a sweet roll or slice of pie to go with it. Later she would iron clothes on my screened porch until supper, surrounded by a pot of yellow mums that she always bought for me.

One of the things I look back on was being out of school for the day to go gather pecans at my brother Sam's farm. We worked hard all day to harvest them and it would be a little added income for our struggling household. This weekend I saw my brother Sam who is the oldest of mama's eight children. He's not in good health after a stroke and congestive heart failure and can barely talk. It was hard to see him this way, so small and weak. I remember him as my big, handsome brother who would pick me up and run with me if I was in trouble or mama was threatening a whippin'. He cried when I surprised him this past Saturday and I cried with him. Sad now to think life had come to this, where he has lots of time to ponder his life and the past, unable to speak.

Plants and trees go into their dormant stage, and I watch as squirrels gather nuts for the winter. We too, draw inward during the fall and winter staying inside our homes for the most part, as we pass the winter and nurture our souls with food, family and friendship, remembering.