Autumn Passings, Autumn Sketching, Autumn Cooking

We have had a stretch of gorgeous days, the perfect autumnal kind of perfect day:  sunny and warm, but not hot, not humid, no hint of rain.  Some days, the breeziness has made it almost uncomfortable, and I do worry about the lack of rain.  We have so much combustible material in the mountains, even before the remnants of Hurricane Helene came through, that I'm much more comfortable if we have rain every few days.  

Let me capture some of the past week in the form of snippets and scraps:

--I made some pumpkin butter, an experimental kind.  I opened a can of pumpkin and put about 1/3 of it into a greased ceramic apple baker.  I stirred in some of my homemade pumpkin spice mix and tasted it--oh, right, I remember, pumpkin butter requires some sugar.  I stirred that in and let the mixture bake as I was toasting some of the rugged bread that I got as a day old special from a local bakery.  Delicious!

--That left me with part of a can of pumpkin, so last night, I made the pumpkin bread dough that this morning I made into pumpkin cinnamon rolls--delicious!

--I have been sad about how many female greats have died in the past few weeks:  ecofeminist writer Susan Griffin, actress Diane Keaton, NPR great Susan Stamberg, and perhaps feminist theologian Phyllis Trible.  I am grateful for their lives and work.  I am glad that they lived long lives.  I wish we could have had them with us for a bit longer.

--I have been doing more sketching in the evening.  

A few years ago, I was happy with the pumpkins I was sketching.  This year, I've been feeling like I lost that skill.  So I've been focused the last few nights, and I've actually used my phone to watch a short tutorial or two to remind me how to do it.

What this blog post doesn't capture is the page after page of sketches that didn't come together.

But this morning, as I saw last night's sketch, I felt happy.

--This week-end is Chili Fest at the church I serve in Bristol, TN.  Last year we went; we had non-refundable hotel reservations, so we made the 5 hour trip.  The trip usually takes just under 2 hours, but a year ago, every road that went directly across the mountains had a closed portion.  The only way to go was west across I 40, north up I 77, and east on I 81.

--I'm so glad that we have survived to see a different autumn.  It's not as blazingly gorgeous as the autumn of 2022, but it has its own beauty nonetheless.