November

Is it honestly November? It must be. The leaves have finished falling, and the light that so many poets have called "the golden light of Autumn" has faded. But not before I got a good picture of it.

We've had such a weird year, climatologically speaking, here in the holler. The summer was cooler and a whole lot wetter than we've been used to which, in perfect accordance to Murphy's Law, meant our riding mower broke down resulting in our yard looking like an ungrazed pasture. Even August did not bake us with its usual supernova, and now that autumn is almost on its way out, I feel I can safely say we've skipped over this year's "Indian summer." I'm not complaining, but I do wonder if we're going to get as much snow this winter as we did rain over the summer.

We've been stacking up wood for the winter, and generally battening down the hatches around here. Back during the summer, God gave us a gift of readily available firewood, when He blew the bark off of a tree just over the hill from our house during a lightning storm. It was about eight a.m. one day, which for the Pearson household equates to "too early to be awake" when a tremendous BOOM rattled the windows and caused Charlie to levitate and air-run into our bedroom. Later that day, we took a walk and found the lightning-struck tree not fifty yards from our house. Viola, the search for this year's wood is over.

Maybe, though, Sunday was this year's version of Indian summer. The day was a sunny, breezy seventy-something degrees, so we took a break from the battening to have a picnic and take a bunch of goofy pictures. Here is one of the illusive and wonderful Abrahambeast in its natural habitat.

After we explained to Lucy that "hotdogs" are not actually made from dog, she wanted to know why she had not been included in the party.

After we explained the same thing to Boots, he was no longer interested.


And after writing this entry, I'm thinking that maybe the light of November is still golden after all.