Feasts of fall

October is my favorite month, and not just for the obvious reason that my birthday falls within it. The feast of fall is color full this month and I find myself feeling blessed and grateful for the breathtaking glory of the dark oranges, yellows, and greens this month regales us with. It is a gift to the eyes and the spirit, which they eagerly consume before the denuded trees of winter make them hunger for green again.

At the home front, our old new house is now ready for Halloween, a tradition I missed during all the years we lived near my small college on the hill. Our house there was on a country road, which no child or parent would want to traverse that or any other night except in a car and on the way somewhere else. While my wonderful husband humored me and helped decorate the house with our lighted pumpkin in the window and the little bat lights on the porch, I couldn't help the creeping sadness of knowing no tiny trick or treaters would be coming over. For several years, my wonderful witch's hat, which has black plastic spiders with red eyes hanging from its ghastly veil, was tucked away in an attic, purposeless.

Not this year! Now that we're back and that Halloween falls on a Wednesday, when I do not have to be up at work, I plan to don my scary hat (which is known to have made at least one trick or treating toddler cry!) and stock up on treats for all the tiny trick or treaters who come from all around this area and enjoy a pre-sunset stroll with their parents or older siblings through the safer streets of our neighborhood.

The lighted pumpkin, with its wicked grin, is at the window, as are the little purple bat lights that we can't even remember how old they are, as are the real pumpkins awaiting to be carved for that spooky night. On the night that my husband took this photograph, our very own black cat, Hamlet, dutifully looked out of our window and one of his eyes glittered, appropriately, for the picture.