Harvest Home

The season for enjoying the fullness of life --

partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest

with others, and reinvesting and saving portions 

of the harvest for yet another season of growth.

Denis Waitley

What a gorgeous morning it is, a great way to begin what looks to be another busy week on my first day back to work in this fall season.  I had a great weekend.  On Saturday I went to our neighborhood Rite Aid and found embroiled in such joy, I felt like a kid in a candy store.  They had so many goodies for autumnal decorations on sale for 50 percent off that I couldn't make up my mind and bought one of almost everything...and some I even bought two of.  As usual, I went especially berserk with autumn with scented candles and came home with such fabulous scents as Fresh Orange, Maple Sugar and Oak, Pumpkin Spice, Cinnamon Pecan Swirl, and Apple Cider.

I even came across the sweetest little harvest flameless tealight candle as shown in the following photo of my welcome Autumn altar.

Here's a closeup of my new faceless harvest goddess.  What a find!  Later she will take a prominent place with my other faceless dolls.

Another of my favorite new additions. "Gather Hope".  It seems that some of these new additions I was meant to find.

And there are more to come.  I just haven't set everything up yet.

I then headed for our fruit stand to pick up my fruit and veggies. (See photo above). I picked up some green, red, and dark purple grapes the size of plums, as well as some large black plums, some jujuba fruit which I have to figure out how to eat, and some apples for my baked apples. I picked up some potatoes for colcannon, but decided on baking them instead. It was a wee bit warm at the equinox so, rather than my original menu of soup, I chose to make a nice healthy vegetarian pasta dish of whole wheat pasta, cauliflower and brocolli sauteed in fresh garlic and olive oil. Simple, but delicious and filling.

Later in the evening, after cooking up some beans and dinner, I lit a few of my new candles and inhaled the fabulous aromas, savoring this fabulous time of the year in the quiet dark of a late evening on the first of our autumn nights.

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life,

then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year

when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the

perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes

on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before.

Mitchell Burgess