Indian Summer

Who could stay inside and clean house on a day like this?

This morning was warm! Like 76 degrees warm! By the time breakfast was done and the dishes and I’d folded and put away a couple of loads of laundry and baked a loaf of bread the early morning gray had given way to late-morning blue skies and sun. Time for an autumn nature walk.

Sophie grins from the stroller.

We rounded up shoes and sippies. Two little kids popped into the stroller and away we went. I was feeling energetic and adventuresome. We ventured across the main street and into a part of the neighborhood where we don’t go as often. New streets, new houses, new plants to see and explore.

Even the ramshackle fence on the corner that’s been falling down all summer (I think it was hit by a plow or a car last winter) seemed beautiful to me, the wood weathered silver and the asters growing up around the piled boards. Bella did not agree. She wondered why I was taking the photo and then told me she didn’t like the photo.

Red maples

Copper leaves

Gold and blue

Burning bushes

I just can’t get enough of the beautiful colors. Especially the maples. This is what I’d always read about in books but almost never saw while growing up in Texas. My kids don’t know how lucky they are to have this tapestry of color outside their windows.

I don’t know what these little four-petaled flowers are called but I love the way they dry into a pale gray-pink. They look so delicate and yet remain on their stems for so long, just fading into a pretty dried version of themselves.

On that count Bella agrees with me.

Ben tries to eat an acorn.

As usual we collected pine cones and acorns and sticks and leaves and pine needles.

Bella collects an armful of leaves.

Bella fell in love with the huge leaves from this sycamore tree and insisted she had to bring a gigantic armful of them home with her. Of course long before we got home she was shoving this armful into the bottom of the stroller. Many more leaves joined them and when we got home they all ended up in a pile on the driveway. Whatever her original plan was—I think she said something about using them for decorating—was completely forgotten.

After the leaves came a stick. A stick that was just right for smacking a nearby tree.

This stick was “long enough to reach all the way to the tree, Mama!” It came home with us and is now in the backyard. Luckily no one was injured during the transport of said stick. She came close to poking Ben, Sophie, and me more than a few times.

Three little pumpkins sitting at my door.

A rosy cheeked pumpkin in my stroller.

On days like today I feel so blessed to live in New England. Check back with me in February to see if I still feel the same.