It's chilly. It's been raining at night - which is lovely on the skylights over our bed. Our blueberry bushes are turning a warm crimson shade, and several streets around town are covered with golden leaves so that they look like the yellow brick road.
We worked all weekend on a movie trailer, and it was a perfectly crisp sunny autumn weekend. We filmed in the woods, and at a large hazelnut orchard, taking care not to crush millions of the lucious little nuts underfoot. On Sunday morning, we got up early to make it to the farmer's market, then sipped hot tea in the backyard and let the chickens roam for awhile before we went to work.
Of all the things we bought at the market, I only got one winter squash, a butternut. I consider that a victory over this instinct that I have: Every autumn, I get an insane desire to start stockpiling squashes. It's not that I love winter squash (though I do, and I'm not a huge fan of the summer varieties); they just look so appealing with their many colors and shapes and sizes, and their long shelf life, and... well, I don't know, I just want them! So I limit myself to one or two per week until I have a cellar to store them properly. In the meantime I get to figure out how to enjoy this butternut - roasted? Soup? Bread? Braised?
Today Keith fired up the furnace to get it working, and then got our pellet stove online. I'm sipping a pumpkin ale by the flame in our pellet stove, enjoying the warmth and beauty of autumn, one of my kittens curled up on my lap. Dinner tonight was chicken and spinach served over quinoa and drizzled with this most amazing peanut sauce. Another good thing about autumn - the greens are back!
But I'm saying goodbye to summer tonight as well, one last dance with Mary Jane. At the farmer's market yesterday I took a bit of the very last blackberry harvest, four pints of sweet, mushy, too-ripe blackberries. One more day and they'd be useless, so tonight I made one last batch of jam. I'll do a little more canning this year, sure (salsa verde, pumpkin butter, and some herb jellies are on the agenda for Thursday), but I'm pretty sure this is it for the jam.
Goodbye, summer.
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