Snap the Whip

Can it be?  My calendar says it is the end of September. Already? Really?  I feel like I am at the tail end of a string playing the children’s game Crack the Whip; immortalized for me in Winslow Homer’s wonderful 1872 painting Snap the Whip; LOVE Winslow Homer’s works~

If you have ever played this game on ice skates you know how fun and fast it can be!  Summer ended with a fluid flurry of activity, and now our late summer is giving way to fall.  It’s been one incredibly quick ride from June until now, and I feel the pace will be fast until after Christmas and New Year.  A magazine shoot will soon be published; a best friend visiting in two weeks’ time; my sister and kids will visit just before Halloween; I am planning my line sheet for 2012, as well as some major gardening projects for fall.  Of course I have also started to make some easy fall recipes, including pumpkin soup for two, with the pumpkin as the tureen~

And Acorn squash soup, using the same old French recipe with bread and garlic and cream; wait ‘til I show you this recipe, you will use it for fall I promise~

I was able to squeeze in a few rare hours in the garden today, mulching, feeding, and digging up the citrus.  I did manage to also box up a lot of canned goods for a local food bank, which I will drop off this week.  And I left two baskets on the gates of two neighbor friends; they are dear and will be thrilled; we talk of dogs and gardens and never business, but they finally discovered the baskets.  Pulling me back to summer, in the garden I have an amazing amount of roses in bloom, here Double Delight~

The light was poor as it was evening, so these are not great shots, but the fragrance of the large bouquet is lovely in the kitchen this eve, a nice reminder of summer.  And yet today I also noticed that the camellias have suddenly started to bud, and so for holiday we will have yet more lovely flowers; loving my Bagatelle rose at the moment, which has gone crazy with old world heavy-fragrance blooms, as well as the yellow and orange Sheila’s Perfume; one of my most prolific bloomers~

Enjoy your late summer in to fall; much more to come very soon~