Sugar and Spice

I've been enjoying an usual anticipation for Halloween this year. Buying carmels and granny smith apples for some weekend confections. Reading Sleepy Hollow instead of textbooks. And - on a weekend visiting home - driving out to the farm off of Woods Valley Road for its annual pumpkin patch. From the road you can see the distant pumpkin pickers, wandering past great clusters of orange orbs. To the east a fine dust coats the white barn on the neighboring land and to the west giant pumpkins dot the dried fields, their burnt red hide decaying sweetly in the heat of California autumn. Back at school, these miniature pumpkins were sensible. Since I didn't have the array of glitter colors to make these, I "adjusted" the natural pumpkin colors by giving each a coat of acrylic craft paint before covering them in sugary, iridescent white glitter.With all this talk of pumpkins and November just around the corner, I'm already awaiting Thanksgiving. The scent of cloves and allspice, the warmth that emanates from the oven, and to borrow a phrase from Washington Irving, "the most luxurious of pies."