A little note on seasons and preparations

All Hallow's eve has passed with cute little lady pumpkins with stars on their cheeks, chocolate, and bits of lovely black lace and tulle. I'm beginning to plan Christmas preparations. I think they will entails some velvet roses, as always, but I'm not sure what else.

Now begins the season of making sweets. Lefse, fruitcake, plum pudding, all sorts of lovely thing can go into Christmas preparations. Only lefse and a dish called Swedish rice are considered essential in my family. My mother and I have a merry little holiday cooking session every year. One of us rolls the lefse out into neat rounds, and the other puts it on the griddle and tries to make sure it cooks evenly.

The leaves turned to bright brilliant colors and have fallen off almost entirely. We've had two little snowstorms that felled the last of the flowers and stripped the trees bare of leaves, and sometimes branches. Now we have bare branches against a sunny blue sky. Soon we will be deeply into winter.