it's back.

If you're in need of some form of consistency in your life, place yourself somewhere which offers up the four seasons for your delight. Fall is back. The leaves are turning golden and dropping in a scattered mess in the backyard. I love this season, but hate its cleanup; however, I'll take it if that means I get to enjoy the pleasures of the fine fall scents that come along with it: for one, the smell of the leaves--fresh and fallen--and then the pumpkin and spice candles, and warm apple cider--only to name a few. I want piles of leaves to magically appear like they did when I was little so I can jump into them with my worn jeans and navy blue knitted hat. I want to run a crayon (preferably Burnt Orange, Brick Red or Goldenrod) sideways over a piece of paper with a leaf beneath it to uncover the veins that give it life then suck it back. The desire to whip up stews and bake an apple pie and put maple syrup on anything possible comes on quickly, and it tends to stay for a few good months. My knitting needles are pulled from the wooden box they've sat in patiently for the past six months; they missed my touch. The ball of yarn that was left unfinished now wraps, loosely, around my neck, not as a scarf, nor as a cowl--it's not tight enough--but as the thing I finally finished, the thing that rightfully fills the purpose to warm my neck and needs no name more formal than "the thing I made." (Paragraphs are overrated.) Do you remember the smell of mud at your high school football game? Or what about the smell of the metal, chain-link fence you stood against and the cup of hot chocolate that kept you warm? (NFL games will never compare.) Layers. Sweaters. Boots. Speckled socks. Blue jeans. Corduroys. Even the wardrobe change I welcome, and fondly. To my disappointment fall always comes and goes in a blink of an eye: as soon as I finally realize it's here it's gone. It is here. I'm not too late. I've caught it, just in time to hold on to it and be in it, before it, and the entire year falls.

Hope you've done the same.
(Fall photos to come...I hope.)