Autumn is a funny thing, with thoughts of summer lingering. It is a time for looking back, reminiscing, tucking away those warm thoughts that must be kept for bringing out on winter’s bleakest days. I imagine in Etta Bend a hundred years ago, my mother and her sisters and little brother would be picking up walnuts in the woods and wearing those nut-brown stains on their hands for several days.
Here in NW Arkansas, a century later, I, an heir of those long-ago times, am thinking of the past and the present and the winter days to come. Will we have a cold, snowy winter? I haven’t broken open any persimmon seeds nor seen any fat woolly worms nor squirrels with extra-long tails–yet. However, with Thanksgiving only a few weeks from now, I know that, hard as it seems to realize it, winter can’t be far away.
Already, the fireplace has been in use a couple of times. Right now the mantel sports two kerosene lamps and a cornucopia. I like to decorate my mantel with season appropriate things but usually, nobody notices. I admire beautiful mantels that are really dressed up for the season but mine just sort of blends in with everything else.
Fall, with its indoor times, has lots of opportunities for writing and that’s what I spend hours doing. Grave Heritage is coming along, the fourth Darcy and Flora book. Moonlight Can Be Murder 
is doing fine. And my publisher tells me that soon there will be an audio version of The Cemetery Club to add to the ebooks and paperbacks. Plus, the publisher of Christian periodicals has sent another assignment. So perhaps it’s a good thing there will be plenty of indoor days with cold weather coming.
Nemo enjoys indoor days, year round. It gives me a warm feeling to know that this little Sporgi (Spaniel and Corgi) that some irresponsible person threw away as a small brown and white puppy, is safe and well fed and has a good home–mine.
I hope you have a blessed Sunday and a satisfying, safe eighth day of November.
“And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 28:2).
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