The Autumn Olive Branch Journal

WELCOME

“I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”

Don’t you just love the fall?

I know so many do … and it can become cliché to admit the love of this season … but I do.

I happily check the day’s forecast when crispness becomes the norm.

Sweata weatha …

For a brief moment, bright color is everywhere, followed inevitably by a few days of windy gray skies and blustery rain that remove any remaining leaves from the branches.

Our family chuckles and likes to mimic Jim Gaffigan, where he’s screaming from a leaf’s perspective … “ahhh get me chlorophyll!!”

I’m not always ready for Autumn to begin, as sometimes the days in the year seem to slip by quicker than I realized.

I like to be purposeful about changing seasons.

We rotate the decor in our home; even picture frames get seasonal prints. We pull down the bin that holds our glass pumpkins, battery candles, blankets, and sofa pillows with phrases about thankfulness from high in Nathan’s closet.

Our family does a quick sweep and dusting of the summertime sailboat, seagulls, shells, and anchor, and packs them away for next year in brown paper.

We all know where the items go, so it’s a quick effort, followed by turning the lights a bit lower each evening.

I enjoy recounting our Autumn traditions.

Now that our children are older, there’s always something being made or planned for; it’s not all up to me. And I love it.

Do you have these or other seasonal activities that have seemed to end up as traditions?

Hayrides around a farm, apple and berry picking, trekking through a corn maze, petting farm animals, and selecting the perfect pumpkin …

No matter the tradition, it’s a season for spending time together, freshly washing the thick living room blankets, and adding a bouquet of orange and plum mums to the kitchen vase.

Our homes, whether they function beautifully or still have a list of things we would like to change, become the setting for our family’s seasons.

I’d love to invite you into ours to chat over a cup of coffee and a slice of apple bread with just a touch of cream cheese glaze. You might smell cinnamon as you walk through our front door and catch the familiar la’s of the Gilmore Girls soundtrack, followed by a Michael Bublé song playing softly from my playlist.

Our conversation would wander the way good conversations do; talking about what you make for Thanksgiving, the love of homes that still feel lovely decades later, and what we each have coming up … since you’d see plans currently spread across our table for a project we will soon begin.

One thought would lead to another as the conversation winds down while scraping up the last of the glaze off of our blue dessert plates, where I’d get up to unfold a pastry box to send a second slice home with you and tuck inside the turkey rub recipe that I said I’d share with you; snipping off a pretty bloom from the vase of flowers to rubber-band to the top of the box.

That is how I hope this Autumn edition of The Olive Branch Journal feels.

Come on in. The coffee is brewed.

- Shandra McCracken