Ode to November

November... my very favorite month, for sometimes inexplicable reasons. I do love the light and the colors and the cozyness of fires in the woodstove. The settling in of the clouds and mists and rain. But I think I love it most for its transitional, fleeting nature. I love the feeling that each and every day the world around me is changing. And I dearly love Thanksgiving, the least commercial holiday, despite its somewhat questionable roots, because it is a family gathering time, and I am blessed to have wonderfully interesting and inspirational family members that I look forward to spending time with.

I'm going to show the entire month in my selected favorite photos in this one blog post. Because I don't have words enough to capture its essence.

The Rest of October

When we left for vacation, our Oregon world was still very unseasonably green, but when we returned, it was in a blaze of Autumn glory. The pumpkin patch awaited, the air had turned crisp, even the angle of light seemed to have shifted. Fall at last.

Into October

I returned from my late September retreat to a newly-revamped bird & squirrel feeder outside my kitchen window. I returned to continued mild weather, making a very green Autumn. I returned to a mound of firewood needing to be stacked (a seasonal favorite; no joke). I returned to just enough crisp in the air to justify the dusting off of my most delicious stew recipes.

I also returned to a scary call-back for a second mammogram and ultrasound (they found nothing but exceptionally dense breast tissue, thank goodness). And... after a few brief weeks of transitioning back to normal life, there was a fatal hard drive crash that ended everything abruptly.

With a family vacation on the calendar for the next week, all I could do was take the failed hard drive to the Geek Squad and pray for the best. Normally a faithful monthly backer-upper, I had lapsed in my good habits for months. Meaning master copies of any new design and financial records were under threat of being lost forever. Re-creating them would have taken weeks of my time, so I paid the big bucks for the highest chance of retrieval, packed my suitcases for vacation and tried to leave the worry behind.