It was another glorious Fall day today, albeit a bit blustery. Well, that wind whipping around will snatch the rest of the leaves from the trees, so I can do my raking in one fell swoop tomorrow.  I’ve really procrastinated with the leaves this year, but every time I was ready to do them, it was either very windy or they were soaking wet, and, I don’t know about you, but I hate handling wet leaves.

Today was a hybrid walking day – I had errands which required the car, but I still took time to take a walk as well, plus, I did a lap or two around the perimeter of the grocery store.

While walking in the ‘hood, I was marveling at the kaleidoscope of color on the remaining leaves along Emmons Boulevard. The various shades of rust or orange were especially pretty today, especially when the morning sun hit them just so.

The harvest décor caught my eye more than once as I strolled along. Pumpkins are still the theme of the day and the bigger and more misshapen, the better.  At Meijer, people were still picking up pumpkins … perhaps for Thanksgiving pies, because I’ve heard there will be a shortage of canned pumpkin this year due to the record rainfall in late June across the Midwest.  So, this means you might just have to get your pumpkin fix by sucking down a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte or a Burger King Pumpkin Spice Oreo Shake … I know you won’t be having a Pumpkin Pie Blizzard at the Lincoln Park Dairy Queen because they closed down for the season yesterday.

Even though you might not be having that slice (or two) of pumpkin pie, there are other orange items to crow about because the first California Clementines of the season have arrived at Meijer. Yeah!  I’m ecstatic and I snatched up a couple of bags of ‘em.  I started looking for these little gems in mid-October, and had to settle on tangerines instead, since I was not about to pay $0.79 for one navel orange.  Call me cheap … but that’s ridiculous.  But, those tangerines were so full of seeds, it required a lot of mess to open and section them, not to mention the brain power to sort them out in your mouth – the good stuff from all those ^%$# seeds!  So, I totally understand why the navel oranges were so expensive.  Also, now I know why, when I found a huge navel orange in the toe of my Christmas stocking on Christmas morning, my mom said “that’s a beautiful big orange and Mommy will section it up for you later to have before dinner” … I probably just looked at it and thought “dumb ol’ orange taking up room in my sock” … now, all these years later, I have a greater appreciation for that large, dimpled, orange orb which “Santa” left for me all those years ago.

I leave you with this thought: “Life is a great bundle of little things” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

[Image by photographer Mikkel Schmidt at Unsplash]