autumnal

A first day of fall that finds me bearing my freckly shoulders is all right with me (only it wasn't so much when I lived in the land of Endless Summer. I craved sleeves and sweaters, then, the way I will surely jones for sunshine late next winter). I really do love the mix of seasons here. I'm looking forward to the cool coziness approaching, but this last hurrah of skin and ice cubes is pretty great.

The boy and I talked about the end of summer, about less sunlight, about Fall. We went into the backyard to look for signs of autumn (why not the front yard? because the front yard has different signs, red flashing obnoxious signs that say Unkempt Garden! Weeds! Unruly! but gradual seasonal changes are less noticeable there still).

Clockwise from top left: hazelnuts (our tiny tiny backyard has 3 old pretty big hazelnut trees and, boy! do we have a lot of nuts), grape stem (concords eaten by the boy who eats the most fruit), dogwood leaves (the first bud in spring, the first to change color in fall), deciduous redwood needles (kinda cute, when it's just one, but when we have several foot high drifts of 'em along the side of the house, less cute).

The boy so kindly made hazelnut muffins for me, but I could only manage one. I am *still* full from all of the crackers I ate today. Crackers + Feta + Roasted Tomatoes. Oh man. So good. How good? Like a letter from home with a dollar in it (as my dad would say). Ten dollars. I've been slow roasting a lot of tomatoes lately, and while I aim to keep them them through the winter, I was particularly lazy with one batch. I started them late in the day and at bedtime, they weren't near dry yet and but I stopped them anyway. Because they're so gooey and soft, I am not so sure they'll keep as long as their more dehydrated compatriots, so what else can I do? Eat those puppies up. A boon on good crackers at the grocery outlet inspired me to do them up like this:

My children, who enjoy tomatoes otherwise, thought these soft oozey clumps looked disgusting. I goaded them for a moment and then stuffed my mouth with another one. More for me, suckers. These crackers are so good. If I didn't eat all the feta up or if I don't wake up with raw sores in my mouth, I'll probably repeat this tomorrow for lunch. And dinner.

In other related equinox news, I made up a batch of mix CDs today. I haven't done this in a while, the mixmaster hausfrau thing. I am not a hip music cat and I always feel a little sheepish sharing the stuff that's doing it for me right now. Here's my fall oh nine playlist:

The last track is my current obsession. You should listen to it straight away so we can drawl out, "alabama, arkansas. . ." together. You'll see.

I kept myself busy in a glue + scissors way for a while. I love being busy that way, but I don't indulge very often because, oh! what a mess. I can barely keep up with the creative pursuits of my daughter. Throw my silly little projects into the mix and we might never see the dining room table again.

I confess to pushing everything to the side so we could eat dinner. I needed it to remain handy so I can bust out some more CD sleeves tomorrow. There's a reason I keep every old calendar, scrap of paper, everything around forever. You never know when you'll need to make an envelope:

That's a lot of stuff to make a fine first day of Fall.