Julie's Raintree

Let's Celebrate...

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To say goodbye to Summer generates a 'pull at my heartstrings' wistfulness. But while it does engender feelings of melancholia, Autumn throws out a warm 'WELCOME' in such an array of riotous color & a variety of coquettish & playful weather that I have to throw my arms open wide & embrace her piquant exuberance! Her teasing behavior first expressed itself at the beginning of this month of September that began very cool & I was thinking we may be in for an early winter. Then, the cool took turns with warm, who in turn, gave way to HOT!!! Like 96 degrees in the middle of September! The last time it was that hot in September in South Dakota was in 1939, so, not in my lifetime. It continued throughout the week, but a wonderful blessing here is, it always cools come evening. We've had some lovely times sitting outside watching the rising of the moon.

& enjoying the cool, even needing to wrap up in quilts at times.

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There is so much to love, love, LOVE about Autumn, beginning with the waning of the hot, to warm, to warm cool days. It starts out in a flurry of activity because the garden is ready now to be harvested of it's vegetable treasures & prepared for the freezer or for canning to be stored in the pantry for frosty winter days.

Apples, apples & more apples....

...fresh off of the tree make the best & most scrumptious applesauce, apple butter,

& wonderful apple pies!

& then there are crabapples. Aren't they just the prettiest little ruby jewels?

I make at least one batch of Crabapple jelly every year so I can give some jars to a grandson because it's his favorite. We love it too. It has such a light delicious flavor.

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But the celebration of the season of Autumn begins, for me, with...

yes, decorating!!

This is our dining room & also the entrance to our home.

Some of my favorite reading at this season is, the book pictured, Gladys Taber (I like to read her Autumn chapters.) &, of course..

the Autumn past issues of 'Ideals' magazines. Oh! & 'Gooseberry Patch' cookbooks.

All sorts of books filled with inspiration & down home fun!
Not to mention some good country cooking. I love to try new recipes!

I don't think there is such a thing as over or under-decorating unless it exceeds the budget. We all have our own tastes & it is so much fun to experiment with our God-given creativity. I was born on Thanksgiving, so over the years I have received many gifts that celebrate this season, which makes it a fun challenge to incorporate them into the Autumn decoration schemes.

I have grown so partial to this pumpkin. I just LOVE him! I just am in love with all kinds of pumpkins! I even love the word 'pumpkin'! I have had pumpkin patches over the years for my kids & grandkids, from which to pick their own pumpkins. That is always a fun time.

Autumn, to me, is the 'warmest' season of the year because of the soft & then fiery colors that become softly muted again. If you could hear Autumn, it would start with a quiet laugh that would crescendo into a waterfall of joyful laughter, & as it cascades to the bottom, mellows into a quiet sigh of satisfaction of a job well done as it then dissolves into little streams & rivulets of contentment. To me, Autumn is a season of joy, so much to engage all of the senses. It really isn't a season of death, just a precursor, a forerunner, to the season of rest to our land, & in a lot of ways to we humans.

This is a very restful picture to me of a most beautiful Autumn sunset on the prairie where we used to live.

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One of the things we like to do in these first days of Autumn is go for country drives. You just never know what you might see.

This is a Rock Marmot. Full grown they are probably the size of an adult beaver. Usually they are reclusive & shy, but this guy lives in a sort of neighborhood. Many years ago, my husband rescued two marmot babies & brought them home. Our girls & myself were very excited at these adorable little creatures. We went to the library (these were the days before the internet!) to find out what to feed them & about their natural habitat. We did what we could to make them feel at home, & at night we would put them in a place of containment. Every now & then we would feed them something that was normally not included in the marmot diet, but their two favorite things were ice cream & chocolate Ovaltine. Now, these little rascals were pint-sized Houdini's, & no matter where we put them, Oliver & Ozzie managed to escape during the night to regions unknown. There were so many places to hide! So we devised a plan. Knowing their love for the chocolate Ovaltine, we would pour some in a small dish & set it on the wood floor & they would immediately come from anywhere in the house to guzzle this ambrosial drink. We could guide them wherever we wanted & they would not leave that dish. We practically had to pry their little paws off! Easy capture.

We would let them out to play in the living room because the floor was of wood, so messes were easy to clean. My husband was eating a bowl of ice cream when Oliver perceived with his olfactory senses that something was going on that he did not want to miss! He ran over to Ron, ran up his leg & onto his shoulder & was going to dive onto that bowl. At just that time, Ron switched hands. Not to be stymied, he ran over to the other side, again, preparing a dive. Ron switched hands again. Oliver repeated the process. This went on for several more attempts, when finally Oliver stopped on the top of Ron's head, & did a perfect swan dive right into the ice cream! (Well, maybe not a swan dive.) Anyway, he worked so hard that Ron let him have some. & the 'boys' did not lick ice cream. They scooped it up in their little marmot paws & ate it. Once, when I was the one with the bowl of ice cream, I tried the same method of switching of hands. This time, Oliver scaled my glasses

across my face! ( This really happened!) That kind of determination had to be rewarded. Not to mention that I was laughing so hard my guard was down. These little critters brought us so much amusement & fun & we loved them so much. & although they never bit us, they never would domesticate, which is, I guess, as it should be. So, we eventually took them back to their own habitat & with heavy hearts, let them go. (They were old enough to live on their own.) As they scurried over the rocks, one of them turned back to look at us. I think he had grown a bit fond of us too. Of course he could have been wondering where he was going to get ice cream & chocolate Ovaltine in the wilderness & if he really wanted to do this. But I really think he was saying 'goodbye' to these big aliens who had given him an inside look at the world of humans, or whatever we were to him. I'm sure it was a story to tell his grandmarmots & even entered his dreams when a bit of warm chocolate Ovaltine would sure taste good on a cold winter's night.

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It is magical whenever I am able to get a picture of the elusive bluebird. They are so beautiful, a flying fragment of blue sky. We have seen several on our drives & when the sun hits them just right, there is a bright, shimmery, blue flash that is almost too dazzling to look at.

Spring foals are growing but still small enough to be adorable.

Don't you just want to hug his neck?!

Isn't this the most unusual looking horse? It is a Danish breed of horse called a 'Knabstrupper'. It looks kind of like a Dalmatian horse!

We take our two dogs from time to time. Schnitzel prefers to sit in the front seat & is a very proper dog. He's very serious about drives & likes to look straight ahead.

Picnics are fun too & so refreshing. This is one of our favorite places, Spearfish Park.

You can barely tell that this heart of rocks is underwater.

Nature's artwork at it's most artistic!

Sometimes, you just need to sit, look, listen & breathe, inhale, exhale, etc.....

There are many things to love about all of the seasons, & when they come, I think I love each one the best. & it's good to contemplate the purpose that God created it for, each with it's own restorative health-giving tonic for our whole being, a curative balm. But I really think that I love this season the best. To me, Autumn is a dance of sprightly pirouettes, twirling, leaping, a last hurrah of praise to the Lord Jesus for glorious life!! Then, she takes a very gracious bow before she is tucked into her seasonal bed until she is called on for her next "Bravo"! performance. I just know she goes to sleep smiling.