Whatever He Says

This Labour Day was as hot and sultry as high summer. But a row of yellow school buses,  shiny and clean, with  numbers prominently displayed on their front windows; stood on a nearby parking lot; their seats waiting to welcome a whole new season's batch of young students. They signaled the reality that no summer lasts forever. In the shade of a magnolia tree, I sat on our small north easterly deck, listening to the chatter of leaves in the soft breeze, and smiling at the irony that Labour Day, being a holiday, gave me permission to do nothing at all.  This morning I did it--nothing, that is. I simply leaned back into my bright blue resin Adirondack  chair and thought for a while, as the cars on the nearby highway zoomed by as in another world. For me, this Labour Day is the first in 41 years that doesn't precede a paid work day. I have the freedom to choose how I spend my time and haven't stopped thanking God for that privilege several times each day. The pa...

Another wonderful guest post this morning, from Paula Walker. Thank you, Paula! For as many of my 69 yrs as I can remember, I have loved the Fall in Southern Ontario. Everything about it: Crisp mornings, rustling leaves, harvest moons, clear night skies, and the profusion of colour : reds, maroons, oranges, yellows, tangerines and everything in between. But most of all, I love the geese. My Mum taught me to follow the geese. Everything stopped at our house when a flock flew over. We would we dash outside, always trailing behind Mum, just to get a better look. One of the huge bonuses of my current home, is its location directly under a geese 'flyway'. In the spring, we welcome their return and all summer, we watch them training the babies, preparing them for the long trek south. They are a pretty straggly bunch until late September. When suddenly, this year's 'recruits' seem to get it and learn to fly in formation. For all of October, they f...

By Belinda Now...is fragrant with the scent of baking apple crisp; is gaudy in its colour palette of impossibly overdone mustard yellow; and red and green apple skins against creamy white, crisp flesh. God seems to be in creative overdrive right now. Our corner of the world looks as though a manic artist daubed splodges of ochre here and there, while saying, "Take that, and that, and how do you like THAT?!" And the riotous frenzy of fall colours has yet to get started. Our apple trees outdid themselves this year and are heavy with fruit, as were our pear and plum trees last month. And I am possessed of a sense of solemn duty to use what God gives and to waste as little as possible. And so, I left my briefcase self behind at the office this afternoon at 5.00 pm and became another person entirely this evening, up to my elbows in apple peel, flour and cinnamon, while I cooked to the classics. The recipe above is the best recipe ever for apple cr...

Wal Mart was my last stop before home after a Saturday afternoon spent at the hairdressers and then shopping. It was getting late and the sky was darkening already when I got into my little plum Honda and prepared to head for home, glad that I didn't have much further to go. It had been spitting rain on and off and the sky was dramatically stormy. I expected it to just get darker, but suddenly and unexpectedly, the sun broke through from its hiding place behind the roiling deep blue-gray clouds. It dazzled and almost blinded me as it blazed from its spot near the horizon, and took my breath away with the resulting dramatic play of light and dark over the cornfields and trees. The entire landscape was floodlit with such glory that I wondered half seriously whether, without knowing it, I had been in a car accident and was now in heaven, so unearthly was the beauty. How I wished I had my camera at hand, but alas I had left it at home. All I could do was drink it all in with my eyes, a...

I sit inside and listen to the boisterous wind out in the dark night, blowing with all its might, buffeting trees and the houses. Our house is snug, airtight and cosy; it feels more so as I listen to the peaceful ticking of the clock in between the gusts. The wind sounds as though it is racing across the fields to the stand of trees on the top of the hill, and back again. The crunch of leaves and the scent of their decay, mixing with that of woodsmoke; the vivid, gaudy colours; it is all so beautiful and sad at the same time. This weekend October ends and November begins. In my loft room this evening I found a lovely little poem from thr Ontario Reader's "Second Book." entitled: November The leaves are fading and falling, The winds are rough and wild, The birds have ceased their calling; But let me tell you my child, Though day by day, as it closes, Doth darker and colder grow, The roots of the bright red roses Will keep alive in the snow. And when the winter is over The...