Gratitude, howlers, leaves.

Having just finished a borrowed book, and since Dev loaned me a new one, I am alternating between being extremely lazy and reading.  Haha.  I meant, between reading and doing chores like taking ashes out, mopping the floor because Emerson Dumbdumb has taken to sneak-peeing on corners, feeding chickens and bringing in the wood.  I love this cool, colorful, short late-afternoon.  The robins are here!  I love hearing them up in tops of yellow trees.  It sounds like they may be happy to be here, too.

In a few short days, all of these leaves will be in my back yard.  Some will be next door, and a few in the hedge out front.  Regardless of where they fall, I will be looking up into the wild blue.  The pansies on the back porch will receive their full measure of sunlight and may bloom all winter.  The ones out front have been decimated by snails and slugs and earwigs, which may meet up with my nasty poison stuff tonight, just because I want to see all the cute pansy faces by the bird feeder.  Is that reason enough to put  some of the kill-snail under a leaf?  Does anyone have a recipe (no flour or sugar, please) that includes earwigs and slugs?  Perhaps I will make a stew.

Every afternoon there is a moment where the light seems to play with individual branches.  

"In the beginning were the howlers.  ...it would start with just one: his forced, rhythmic groaning, like a saw blade.  That aroused others near him, nudging them to bawl along with his monstrous tune.  ...As it was in the beginning, so it is every morning of the world."  Don't you love Barbara Kingsolver?  Doesn't it make you mad when she steals your lines?

 
I have been feeling a little sad, but in the face of such glorious Life around me, am reluctant to own up to it.  Is it the change of season?  Winter is only a few days away.  All of this wild color will soon be gone, the brilliant leaves will be sliming into large circles under the trees.  No, it is Change.  You know, more of that-which-I-have-absolutely-no-control.  This being the place to lay down doubt, pick up some faith, and write out a longer gratitude list.

• I am grateful for yellow afternoons.
• I am grateful to talk to my sister today.
• I am grateful for Panama coffee.
• I am grateful for robins.
• I am grateful for bouncy dogs.
• Warm fire.
• Supper.
• My bed.
• Dishes to wash.
• Laundry to fold.
• 4 eggs today, because I didn't bring them in yesterday.
• Knock knock jokes.
• Choice.

I am also grateful.  Just plain, ordinary, grateful.  Filled up.
xoxoLC