Looking forward to fall

I used to hate fall. I lived on Hebgen Lake and right after Labor Day Weekend the campground cleared out and suddenly everyone was gone. I remember hearing the geese honking as they flew past. It seemed such a sad sound. Summer was over. I wouldn't see a lot of the summer people until the next year.

I must be getting old, but I love fall now. I always liked going back to school, buying supplies, getting my books. It felt like an adventure. Who knew what would happen that school year. But now it is a time to shift gears.

I've spent the last week canning: peach jam, hot spicy carrots, pickles, pepper jelly, spiced peaches. We've put up bags of green beans and corn. There are still dozens of tomatoes turning ripe on the vine and cantaloupe the size of softballs getting sweet under the corn stalks. We'll have red potatoes, hard as stones, late into fall and turban winter squash until Christmas.

Yesterday I cleaned my kitchen, even washed the walls. Then I started washing all the bedding and hanging it on our clothesline, the kind with the large metal T's at each end. My husband wanted to take them out when we bought our old stone house. No way. I love the smell of my sheets and towels after drying on the clothesline. Yesterday I listened to the snap of the sheets in the wind. What a wonderful sound.

I'm like the squirrels stocking up and getting ready for the coming winter. It feels like a new beginning. The air is filled with expectation.

And of course I have lots of plans for fall. The local quilting group just sent me the calendar through December. We have a shop-hop coming up. My first. Apparently we are going to drive an hour away, catch a bus and then hit three quilt shops in eastern Montana and North Dakota. There are lots of projects planned this year and some fun classes coming up. I have a new sewing machine and am excited to get cracking.

Between that and writing (I'm working on Whitehorse: The Winchesters, coming out beginning next spring), it will be a full, fun fall. My husband and I will play tennis until the snow falls and we will have a lot of company that will warm our big old house. I think I'm starting to love fall more and more.