Putting cows on the front page since 1885.
Dear September,
It doesn't seem possible that you are ready to leave us. We grew so accustomed to your golden sunshine, we thought you would just stay. But your gentle evenings grow ever darker and last week you handed the summer reins over to autumn.
Overflowing abundance was in your days. There were weddings and windows and water, the latter mostly coming from our wells and only an inch from your skies. The Living Water was in our Bibles and in our church in the wild wood. The weddings were dreams-come-true for the young. The windows went open and shut to accommodate your fluctuating temperatures.
There were peaches and pears and potatoes. The fruit we bought to eat, to can, to make desserts, to share. The potatoes I dug and stored in buckets.
There was pizza sauce, powerful sunshine and peaceful songs. The sauce we canned for future pizzas from tomatoes. In five different gardens I helped pick the soft, red edible fruit ripened by the blazing sun in your skies. The peaceful songs included chirping crickets and lisping grandchildren. It was my own lonely voice or blended with other voices in my life.
There were picnics, poetry and peppers. The picnics were on my patio with my husband, in the camp next door with different people, on a deck with my baby girls and in a Lafayetteville lawn with three of my grandchildren and their mother. The poetry was in the camp next door around the crackling fire with my friends, in my 'Streams in the Desert' devotional and on our lips by memory. The peppers were green and red, chopped up for the freezer, sliced for a veggie tray or fried with onions for campfire sausages.
Silage for the silo meant my husband spent hours on the tractor to harvest the ripening corn. Salsa for the sour cream meant I cooked and strained the tomatoes for a jar to open later for my menu. Sleep for the sleepy meant we energized and rebuilt to start another of your golden days.
Red was in the raspberries I picked, blue was in the jeans I mended for my grandsons, green was in the fifth cutting hay my husband baled and white was in the milk pitcher, fresh and cold.
Your one cool, wet Sunday had boys and books and blocks. On the huge braided rug in the attic we checked out all the stored toys. Books were in all your days. My grandchildren and I said good-bye to Nat Bowditch and are now ready to meet Pollyanna.
There were catacombs, carrots and cupcakes. The catacombs were in the book I read, where Christians hid in an underground labyrinth to escape persecution but even then they were sometimes tossed to the lions at the colosseum in Rome. But I am spoiled as I sit in your fresh air and sunshine to wash and peel carrots from my garden. The cupcakes made by my daughter-in-law looked like owls and helped celebrate the 6th birthday of Grandson Jairus.
In your days were forage wagons, frost woes and foliage wealth. The wagons are a green trio to carry the chopped corn from fields for future feed. The frost woes came suddenly in your nights to steal our colorful flowers, earlier than we've had for years. From the breath of God you began the foliage show with red maples blushing and golden rods bowing.
Manure and monarchs and mums marked your days. The first "m" is underfoot in the cow stable and flying in the air from spreaders to land in the fields, dark and dank, offensive odor. The next "m" also flies through the air but silently, regal and royal, created by God to migrate, away from the cold that will come when you go away. Mums are so transient but all my favorite colors.
Flowers in bouquets, faithfulness at breakfast, fearlessness in beauty......... oh, thank you for your fullness and bounty. We never know when they might be gone so I do well to smell the roses today and appreciate the punctual meeting for breakfast with my husband. And pray to God to protect cute, little granddaughter Kari who fearlessly walks everywhere with her little legs that are now 1 year old. Thank-you for the many blessings in your days.
Good-bye.
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