Officially Fall.

The garden seems all dried up all of the sudden. And it's officially fall.

We bottled honey yesterday. 138 pounds.

And I wandered around looking at my gardens. The gardens don't inspire me this time of year. The opposite actually.

Ugh. I don't like fall this year.

I am spending more time with the dog. Kinda boring, but I don't want to do the maintenance on the gardens. I love weeding in the spring, with all the promise of the new flowers. But tidying up in the fall. With the promise of wind and cold and wet snowy weather. Ugh. Not a fun prospect.

Used to be I'd have 4 pumpkins for the front porch. I'd decorate for fall. But now it seems silly. No kids at home is bumming me out.

Looking at where they used to wait for the bus. Thinking about a fall halloween party. Carving pumpkins. Making a scarecrow to sit on a chair in the front.

I gotta find a new "place" to be. The old fun fall activities aren't doing it.

Sitting around having coffee with my friends whose kids are off at college, trying to console each other, that isn't working either.

Maybe time to start making my Christmas presents (kinda early) or cleaning the basement again (as appealing as like weeding a fall garden)

It's fun to look at the spring and early summer gardens. I just gotta find the beauty in the fall again.

Happy Horses

When I was a little girl about 10, 11 and 12, there was only ONE thing at the top of my to do list, want list, gotta figure out how to have it list. You got it. A horse. Or a pony.

I would use every birthday wish, every first spoonful into a new jelly wish and every shooting star wish on getting a pony. I bought myself a card of an old lady shoveling horse poop, because inside the card said: I just know there is a pony around here somewhere.

As a teen I would babysit horses and ponies when their owners went on vacation. One summer I had a horse (3 different horses actually) 3 weeks in a row. Those horses never had been brushed, fed carrots, rode and pampered as much as when their owner was away.

Even though its many years later, I still pine away for a horse every so often.

Yesterday when I was taking a walk on the street around the corner, I snapped this photo. Looking at it, it occured to me, this place is less than half a mile away from my house and I've never set foot into their horse farm (eh, em) "equestrian center". Maybe because they only ride english. Maybe because they charge people to ride, but mostly because I'm sure they wouldn't find it at a normal for a woman of my age to want to swap cleaning stalls for brushing and playing with the horses. How silly.

Maybe I don't want a horse as much as I thought I did. Now all the things I was told as a kid come into my head whenever I think about buying one. "Horses are expensive." "What if it got lose?" "You'll never be able to go anywhere." "What if the horse kicked somebody and we got sued?" "We don't have a good place to keep a horse."

Meanwhile, horses still take my breath away.

Walking Lucky