these are the first days of fall.
a borrowed line, from stephen dobyn's poem "how to like it." there is a point every year when that sentence becomes soundtrack for everything. i look out the window and sense the sunlight is not the warming kind, but the kind that points toward all there is worth looking at: the substantial, handsome pumpkins as strange and remarkable as stonehenge in an otherwise silent field. a blue soup pot that has seen me through the best and worst and vesseled broth in between. i look upon it like a friend. these days make it hard to ignore the pulse within everything, sometimes with hummingbird speed, sometimes as slow and as hushed as leaf, upon leaf, upon leaf.
10 things to have & do while it's fall
1. making the annual pilgrimage to bate's nut farm (aka nate's butt farm) in valley center, california for cinderella pumpkins and funnel cake
2. toasted hazelnuts, crushed and sprinkled on nearly eveything
3. cave aged gruyere melted on wholegrain bread
4. tailgating & drinking cocoa with a touch of ground chipotle from a thermos in the bleechers
5. oeufs en meurette--eggs poached in winey, rich sauce bordelaise--on a late sunday morning
6. making molly wizenberg's cranberry chutney with crystallized ginger and dried cherries from her book a homemade life.
7. picking apples in julian, california. returning home to stew stockpot quantities of cinnamon-cardamom applesauce.
8. making vegan mushroom soup--the essence of earth. recipe to follow tomorrow.
9. listening to sad, beautiful songs like this one: charlot webster - whisky & wine
10. earl grey supreme. if not in sienna-hued new england, imagining it there