So, I really have not given up on blogging, it's just been a while and Grace somehow took some letters off of the keyboard and I haven't been able to get them back in, so that has hindered my writing. The boys are actually taking a nap in the same room and both quiet, wonder of wonders!! That is a great blessing. Ian's frenetic excitement has gotten worse lately, sometimes it seems he is just incapable of calming himself down, and when he is supposed to be taking a nap, (which he needs) and he knows George is in there with him, he just wants to play. Thus we end up with two overtired boys, and one stressed out Mama. So, the fact that they are both sleeping in there today is wonderful.

It is finally starting to feel a little fallish out, with a breeze holding a hint of briskness to it, and the leaves changing and falling a bit. I miss real fall, real, stark chill in the air, crunching through early morning grass that still holds the frost tightly, and being surrounded by a riot of colors everywhere you look. The smell of dry hay and wet leaves in the air; the sound of orange and purple and red leaves skittering across a dirt road, curled upon themselves until you crunch them slowly under your feet. Fall has always seemed a time of heightened senses to me, just the color and smell and sound and feel of it all becoming so much more vibrant. After a summer dulled by muggy heat and languid days in water with your senses blending together, and before a retreat from the bitter white world of winter, into the closeness of treasured heat and rest, fall has always seemed the time of one last big stretch outward from yourself, where God stretches His hand forth and paints the trees while you are sleeping one night, and when you wake to a world of deepening color and bright sound, of earthy smells so familiar and yet so new, you can only exult in the richness and praise Him for being a God of continual creation.

I guess people naturally compare their present surrounding with that which they come from, for we cling to what we know, what we've done, where we grew up, as kind of an unconsious standard by which all other experiences are compared. For me, that place, that setting, is a small town in Maine, a dirt road, a big old farmhouse, the memory of seasons past. I can't help but see all in front of me through the filter of what is behind, what I look back on now as good and right and fulfilled surroundings. If I close my eyes now, I can picture myself standing in front of my grandparents house in October. The wind is blowing my hair, making goosebumps stand up on my neck. I can smell the smoke from the chimney, and still feel the pressure of the gnarled wood on my arms from when I filled the woodbox hours earlier. I start to walk up the side of the road, scooting the piles of leaves with my toes as I go. The three tall trees in front of the greenhouse are still bright orange, although in the lower branches, the leaves are darker, duller, getting ready to fall. Over in the garden, almost everything is dried and harvested, although there are still a few gourds and pumpkins among the spiny vines. The small apple tree in front of the barn still has a few tart, rosy apples clinging to the branches, and as I get nearer the tree my nostrils fill with the dusky aroma of the apples fallen and past on the ground beneath the tree. The wild turkeys have eaten some of them, there are less today then there have been. All the animals do well this time of year, I see, as the bird and squirrel feeders boast full ears of dried corn and suet hangs in the pine at the end of the lawn. The deer never venture this near the house, but if you sit still long enough on the lawn, you can see them coming out to feed in the lower fields, just flashes of tawny brown among the darker browns of the tall grasses, uncut and left to seed. The wind is picking up again, making little whirlwinds of fallen leaves on the road, and the deer straighten their ears as they pick up my scent, freeze, then dart into the woods. It's time to go in, anyway, the sky is starting to reflect the colors of the trees, and darkness is rising quickly from the ground, only the tops of the trees now showing any color as the landscape becomes a sillhouete of shadow against the brilliance of the sky and the glory of God moves to another realm.