Recycling Nature's Way

Each Year, as Fall ends , I remove the Boston ferns from the front porch.

I buy them from our local farmers co-operative, and with a faithful watering, and the occasional feeding, they grow into huge plants which we enjoy them all season long

They are lush and green, but after the first few hard frosts hit, the leaves turn brown, and I'll transport them to the trees and offer them to the birds as a winter refuge.

I have tried hanging them in a room and watering all winter through, it makes a huge mess, so I've given up, and resigned myself to the fact that each spring as soon as the farmers greenhouse flings open it's doors, I'm the first in line.......

Home Sweet Home

Braided rugs

Tea-filled mugs

Flowers in jugs

Familiar hugs

Heartstring tugs

Home........

How I'll Miss You When You're Gone

Sixty days and counting, still blooming your little hearts out.

How you've made me smile each morning .....

Night Visitor

Each evening over the past few weeks, we've had a visitor.
Almost like clockwork, between the hours of seven and eight o'clock, he/she arrives for the bowl of cat food, left on the porch, for Oliver the cat.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this animal it is an Opossum, the only marsupial in North America.

This means the animal carries it's young in a pouch, much the same as the Australian kangaroo.

The name "opossum" comes from the Algonquin Indian name for the animal, pasum.

The opossum is perhaps best known for faking death as a means of defense when attacked.

He is capable of falling over on his side, his mouth open in a death-like grin from which state he cannot be roused until the danger is past, although this is usually done as a last resort.

More likely a threatened opossum will look for the nearest exit and run away (or more accurately “waddle away,” since they cannot move particularly fast). They will also sometimes bare their teeth, hiss, or even growl. With such displays they appear quite fierce, but actually they are not accomplished fighters and are very rarely aggressive.

Many people consider the opossum a filthy animal, in part because of his mousy gray coat but also because he’s often seen foraging through trash cans and is known to eat carrion.

In truth, however, the opossum is one of the cleanest animals around. They groom and bathe themselves meticulously, as scrupulously as the most finicky house cat, and have even been observed to stop in the midst of eating to clean themselves several times before finishing. The only thing he’s missing is a dinner napkin.

Here in the Southern states, we refer to the opossum as a 'possum' dropping the 'o'.

I've named him Opie, after the character Opie Taylor from the Andy Griffith Show.

Ghostly White Pumpkins

'White pumpkins tumble over silvery fields '

They're here...

Eerie-looking white pumpkins — naturally white, not painted are finding their way into more and more homes for Halloween season.

The albinos are called Ghost pumpkins, Snowballs, Luminas or Caspers — presumably a reference to the friendly ghost.

They seem like they will almost glow.

White pumpkins, simply another variety of the autumn favorite, have been around for a while, but what was once a curiosity at farmers markets is now available at grocery stores and pumpkin patches.

Scarlet Ball

"October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band."

~ October's Party, George Cooper.

Sweet October Rain

Mother Nature heard my plea and sent rain to this lush Tennessee valley today.
After fifty days of sunshine, the ground is parched and dry.

If you listened carefully you could hear the trees and flowers, heaving a big sigh of relief, their roots and foliage drinking in every last drop of moisture.

"Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain."
~Author Unknown

Awe of Autumn

Be clothed within an autumn mist
Of morning’s coolest dew
Look upward to the painted sky
Of season’s rusty hue
Step lightly midst the crunching leaves
That blow ‘pon hearty breeze
Then hunker down and lay their bed
‘Neath winters snowy freeze

Be crisp the night with snap of chill
And short of day be warm
The sunset mirrors the changing leaves
As stars of night do form
The fields be tanned with burdened straw
Of summer’s life fulfilled
And autumn’s flowers, days be kissed
With season’s colors willed.

~ Sherry Gail Heim

Wreath Hanging

I'm taking advantage of the splendid warm days we've been having lately and decorating for Fall while it's still shirt-sleeve weather.
I usually mix the Fall-themed decorations, with Halloween ghosts and goblins lurking in between.

There are signs of changing seasons everywhere.
Leaves turning reds, oranges and yellows. The fields are full of wild berries, Rose Hips, Wild Blueberries, Autumn Olive.

Sadly we've been without rain for almost a month now, the lawns are brown and parched.

"On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels . . .”

~ Charles Dickens

To Autumn

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells."

~ John Keats, To Autumn