My Favorite Season

I LOVE Fall.  I love the colors, the light, the relief of cooler days and nights.   This morning was foggy with soft layers of grey landscape, everything damp from the overnight rain.  I walked the dog who was happy to be out, and the beauty of the changing leaves, a dewy cobweb and cheerful pumpkins on doorsteps made me feel deeply content.  

Fall brings bowls of oatmeal with local apples and raisins stirred in, fragrant with cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices.  Fall brings warm golden sunlight, soft misty mornings and rain, such a relief for my parched garden.  In the mountains we celebrate the first snow.  In my kitchen I'm thinking about soups and stews.  I can sit, curled up on the sofa with a colorful quilt, a cup of tea and a new book and not feel like I should be doing something else.  My dog is curled up beneath her own blankets.  If we don't cover her, she'll bury herself in them anyway!

I've just finished reading "When I Found You"  It's our book club selection for this month.  I found it hard to put this book down.  

Briefly, Nathan McCann finds a newborn abandoned in the woods near his home while out hunting one morning.  Amazingly the baby survives and Nathan tries to adopt him but after the baby's teen mother dies in Police custody, the baby's Grandmother decides to raise him.    Nathan makes her promise to tell the boy about him and bring him to meet Nathan when he is older.  The boy, called Nat after the man who found him in the woods, is in constant trouble and when the Grandmother can no longer handle him, she brings him to Nathan.  This is a story about a man who loves unconditionally and never once gives up on a troubled boy.  Everyone should have a Nathan McCann in their lives!   I need to seek out other books by this author.

Now I am reading "Tower of Thorns".  Juliet Marillier is one of my favorite authors and this is a sequel to "Dreamer's Pool".   I might need to light the fire and make a second cup of tea....

This is Tia in her blanket.  She loves to burrow.  Greyhounds have a fine coat and little body fat so they feel the cold and heat.  She has two blankets like this and drags them round the house to wherever she wants to snuggle.