🎃 Autumn: Nature’s Most Beautiful Mess......by Julianna Rowe

 "Autumn, Nature's Most Beautiful Mess"  by Julianna Rowe

Think about it. In spring, if your yard were covered in dead plant material, you'd clean it up. In October, we drive around saying, “Ohhhh, look at the colors!” Then tiy all go home and rake the dead stuff into enormous piles. And just when you're finished, the neighbor's tree sends over reinforcements.

Then there's the whole pumpkin situation. Somewhere along the way, in our good old USA, from September through November, everything must taste or smell like a pumpkin. Coffee, bread, cookies, cereal, cream cheese, candles, and air freshener. Probably motor oil by now. I like autumn too, but I don't necessarily need my house, my breakfast and my armpits smelling like pumpkin spice. Yes I do!     

And the decorating! We go to a store and pay money for fake leaves while approximately eleven billion real ones are lying outside for free. We buy decorative sticks. Think about that. We purchase sticks. Then you put them in a vase and call them “fall branches.” The dog could drag the same thing through the door and you'd yell at him.

Then there are decorative pumpkins. Not the useful kind, the

tiny ones, the lumpy ones, the white ones, the velvet ones, and the wooden ones. Pumpkins that have apparently been to charm school and no longer wish to associate with pie. Don't forget the pink ones.

And autumn clothing deserves its own paragraph. Every advertisement shows some woman wandering happily through leaves wearing a beautiful sweater, scarf and boots all in oranges, browns, deep greens, and burgandys. Her hair is blowing gently in the cool crisp breeze, holding a steaming mug. Where is her coat? Because in Wisconsin, autumn lasts approximately eleven minutes. You leave the house at 8:00 wearing a sweater because it's 52 degrees, by noon it's 76, and at 5:00 somebody says there's a chance of frost.

But hey, I love Autumn.  The crisp clean smell of the air. The trees giving themselves another go round at life.  Shedding the old and birthing the new come Spring.  And I love carving pumpkins.  Getting my fingers inside that gooey mess, washing the seeds then baking them to a crisp crunch.  (Actually I hate putting my fingers inside that goo.) So I paint mine. These were painted about twenty five years ago, hopefully I have improved. One is Liza Minelli, and another is some famous football player.  Autumn is also football weather.... I can still remember those Friday Night Football years. Bright lights and everyone screaming for those young man-boys running down the field. Most every one of them dreaming of becoming a famous athlete.  And the Homecoming games! 

I love the Mums.  Mums everywhere. Golds, burgundys, oranges, purples, and so big and heavy you needed a cart to get them home to set as a welcome on either side of the entrance to your home.  Why, they only lasted a month or two but it was worth it. 

So I love it all.  The rotten leaves, the smell of pumpkin pies, coffee, lotion, and heck I bet there is a toilet paper infused with pumpkin essential oils.  Guess it couldn't hurt. Or could it?  There are some things even I do not wish to investigate. Okay back to the dead leaves in the yard.  Every season has its mess, but my favorite mess is Autumn. I suppose it's all in how you look at it.  Is my yard half empty or half full?   

 Be safe and be kind to one another. 

The Happy News Lady🎃