I am enjoying the cooler weather. It means I don't have to leave the house so early in the morning to walk. The brisk air allows me to wear a sweatshirt, that usually comes off about the halfway mark. However, it is the need for the sweatshirt when I do my chores, feeding my two horses, one donkey, two steers, and two cats, that I enjoy. It means Fall is on its way.
The other day when I helped my hubby down by the dairy hay barn and shop, I caught a whiff of decaying leaves. Have you noticed how fallen leaves, once they hit the ground have a unique smell? That was the scent I caught and my mind did a happy dance. "It's Fall, it's Fall!" That scent I remember as a child when the cottonwoods, willows, and lilac trees would lose their leaves and my brothers and I had to rake them up and dispose of them in the compost pile. I loved that time! It also meant picking up the apples that had fallen to the ground and making apple cider.
Fall meant school had started. I loved school! I enjoyed learning and having access to a library every school day. During the summer we only went to town once a month to go to the county library. I couldn't' wait for that trip each month. I'd load up on what I thought would be enough books until our next trip, but I would devour them and read them again before we made that monthly trip to town for groceries.
The cooler weather, the work for people who farm slows down. Instead of irrigating, sowing, and getting in the crops, now it is just taking care of the animals and making sure there is enough firewood (or wood pellets or propane) for the winter along with feed for the animals.
Halloween and Thanksgiving are holidays that are fun. Halloween to dress up. I don't do that at all anymore, but as a kid I loved coming up with a costume. They are always homemade. As an adult, I loved dressing up and helping at our kids grade school Fall Festival. We even made my husband's walking floor semi trailer into a haunted house one year. Thanksgiving is always about family. Gathering as many as we can together. And if we have friends who will be alone, we invite them over too.
The nights are cooler, the days are growing shorter, and Fall is tapping on my shoulder, making my heart sing.
Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 51 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it
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