This week, the Belles are writing about autumn. I’m guessing many of you think autumn is the best time of year, and I’d love to hear what you love most about this magnificent season.
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of autumn here in Oxford, MS is harvest. October and November are filled with the sounds of cotton pickers and strippers, module builders and bins, and diesel trucks designed to haul bales from the fields to the gins.
Our family doesn’t grow cotton, but our small sustainable farm is perched on a ridge overlooking the Yocona bottoms. We look out over acres and acres of rich black river soil groomed into long, straight rows of cotton. There, solid brown bolls emerge from big pink blooms and burst into fluffy white clouds of cotton each summer, coating the fields like off-season snow until autumn arrives. This is the time of year when the defoliants are sprayed and the remaining fibers are plucked from their woody stalks, leaving the fields empty and hungry for new seed. |
| Photo used with permission from publicdomainpictures.net |
Autumn here also means glorious foliage, golden and baked crisp, like the whole world is one giant crème brûlée, with layers of browns, yellows, reds, and oranges that each deliver a specific flavor. Can’t you taste it? There’s nothing better. Especially when our family rakes bigger than big leaf piles for jumping, hiding, and building forts.
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| Ole Miss Tailgate Photo courtesy of Joey Brent |
Of course, fall also means football. In the SEC, football comes second only to God, and in Oxford, it’s all about the Grove. Tailgating at Ole Miss means girls in high heels, chandeliers wired to dangle from tents, and plenty of good ol’ Southern food. Think potato salad, dry rub barbecue, sinful dips, and all sorts of dainty appetizers. For locals, it also means our town swells from a quaint residence of 14,000 folks (plus 10,000 coeds) to a swarm of more than 80,000 fans in a matter of hours. Hotty Toddy!
Here in our home, we light the first of many fires, we bake the last of the pears into a pie, and the kids start to write their Christmas lists. Our son practices trombone for his very first band concert, and our daughter blasts a steady stream of music from her room, running downstairs every few songs to say, “Listen to this!” excited to discover a new band or melody that inspires, that brings smiles.
Each year, the autumn comes, and with it comes a readying. A gathering of family, as nature reminds us to slow down, pay attention, savor these days, and waste not a single second of sunshine, for the snows are sure to come.
I just returned from Colorado, where autumn was met with a flurry of snow. Here’s a shot I took at Wind River Ranch, high above Estes Park. What’s autumn like in your neck of the woods, and what does this time of year mean most to you?
Read more about Mississippi in Julie’s bestselling novel, Into the Free, now available in audiobook and large print format, too.
