Autumn in Wisconsin

Fall lasts a long time here and is most people's favorite season. The apple harvest marks the beginning of autumn and apples are HUGE here. My neighbor brought over a jar of apple butter last year. No one could tell me what to do with it, but everyone makes it and has jars and jars in their basements. After the apples come the pumpkins. This year it was warm for both apple and pumpkin harvesting, warm enough that I saw a woman picking pumpkins in a tube top. Unlike apples and pumpkins, tube tops do not have a place in Wisconsin, due to the large consumption of cheese, beer, and bar food, all of which is deep fried.
Anyway, following pumpkins come the changing of the leaves. This year, because of unseasonable warm temperatures and late rain, the colors have been spectacular. We don't bag our leaves, we rake them into the street over and over until a big truck scoops them up. Unfortunately, fall is also the time the wind from Canada makes its annual emigration to the northern plain states. This means that we are raking the same leaves over and over. This is our street the morning after we raked and minutes before the big truck came to scoop. This is our front yard. It really didn't feel right to rake up leaves this yellow to be thrown out. It looked like I was raking gold. The girls have loved the piles of leaves we've been able to make with the leaves from all the trees in our backyard. This isn't the first time the big truck has come by. We have had bigger piles of leaves twice this year, and we'll probably have to make another one before the year is through.
So for all of you friends who live in warm places and miss autumn, here it is! Come see us anytime; we'll put out the apple butter for you.