It was a blustery day, the kind of Fall day that Winnie the Pooh would appreciate. A blustery day after a chilly night.  On the last night of Thanksgiving weekend we went through almost two bags of firewood while our ten year old completely obliterated us in a marathon game of Milles Bournes.  During the day we had to turn on the pellet stove because of the chill.  Then we had a cord of wood delivered the next morning by some good folks from the lovely town of Roslin, just down the road a ways.  That should do us for the winter.  Now I know what a cord of wood looks like.  It’s about this high, that long, and this wide.  With wood.

Losing my dad this year had cast a pall on the ‘Thanks‘ part of the holiday, especially since he would have been there to share in the celebration.  Not feeling much like the ‘giving’ part either.  My impulse is to just ‘take’ instead but it’s Fall and there’s work to do.  It’s time to bring in the harvest before the first frost which we would do if we had crops, which we don’t, so we’ll do other things instead.  Pull in the dock and put the boats away.  Clean the eaves troughs.  Buy a new filter for the furnace.  Tidy up the lawn furniture and lean it against something so the leaves don’t rot the fabric and the snow that’s about to fall on us doesn’t crush our pretty red chairs.  Sweep the deck of leaves.  Fill up bags of garden waste so the garbage take-away-ers can ignore them week after week as they sit out by the street like little soldiers, getting softer as they lean, while the paper bags start to compost along with the leaves inside them.  Take me away, they will plead, as the bright green garbage trucks pass them by.

Another nice Autumn thing to do is to plant some fall-coloured mums along with some ornamental cabbages in pretty pots on the porch to cheer us up.  Don’t do as I did one year and plant REAL cabbages by mistake.  They didn’t look like much at first to these neophyte gardeners but then they grew into proper green cabbages, not the ornamental kale-type that we had expected.  How embarrassing was THAT?  A bunch of my Irish relatives showed up suddenly, all ready for lunch with a big soup pot and a wooden spoon.  Sheesh.

Sweaters, slippers, covering up.  Hot chocolate.  Tea.  Hot soup and root vegetables.  Nesting.