Fall nesting

[mrissa]

athenais was talking about buying a bunch of clothes in lovely new fall colors, and it sounded so good. I don't need bunches of clothes, but last year I found some essentials and a lovely happy non-essential-but-perfect shirt when I was in Boston, and it was such a good thing for fall, to have soft rich colors to wear. I rarely buy myself clothing, compared to some women I know, but when I pick something out as special, I'm rarely if ever wrong: I really do reach for that piece as soon as it's clean. I would really like to go find another thing like that, something that isn't essential but is perfect for me anyway. That would be a good fall thing to do. Can't think when I'll have the combination of the time and the energy to do it, though. Unlike athenais, I don't need clothes this very minute, and I already have "frivolous fun activities" slotted into the next two weekends for about as much energy as I have, if not more. (scottjames, I'm not trying to say that your wedding is frivolous, but my attendance at it is not what one would call essential to the proceedings.) Still, the colors are so lovely this season and have sucked so thoroughly in recent seasons that I feel like I really ought to go grab some basic sweaters and T-shirts quick before they decide that all adult women ought to wear exclusively pink and peach again. It may verge on necessary. I'm not sure.

My other fall urge is another side of the same urge. It's basically a nesting urge, getting enough stuff together to make it through the winter. I want to bake and bake and cook and then bake some more. The day of the tomato basil soup fast approacheth -- basically as soon as I have the energy to deal with it -- and we are, I believe, entirely out of breakfast breads in the freezer. (My usual pattern is to make too many of them, give them away, and then run out at the end of summer before I'm back into baking mode. This is complicated by days like yesterday, where harvesting the tomatoes was more or less the extent of my energy.) Intellectually I know that I will be no better prepared for the snow if I bake a pan of brownies (especially if we promptly eat it), not much better prepared if we freeze a tin of oatmeal sugar cookies instead of snarfing them. I know that baked apples and apple crisp and apple bread are not necessities, that squash soup with fried sage leaves is kind of a lot of work and again not strictly required, that gingerbread may in fact be optional for now. (If you ask me again in December, I will have a different answer about the gingerbread.)

I know that it may reach 80 degrees again today.

But it's September; it's fall. Fall is mine. Fall means we're home and the world is still turning. I don't think it's wrong to want to mark that somehow.

Do you get fall urges? What kind?

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

I get the urge to buy fresh paper supplies. Fall should come with new notebooks and new pens. I attribute this to far too many years in school, likewise the feeling that fall is the time to start new projects.

Fall is also camping season for me. I love being out in the weather, smelling the dried leaves, sitting by the creek (or in the creek) and watching the water flow, carrying an occasional leaf with it.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I tend to do fall cleaning instead of spring cleaning.

Fall is when I start really wanting to eat again.

Fall is when I expect to see family and friends.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

This season is for bracing against the last of the really terrible heat waves, so I mostly just endure, hoping that maybe, maybe, next January February we might see some brief bands of rain. (In March it's best not to think about it, because it isn't going to happen for almost another year.)

When I was a kid, September was the time to get the next pair of shoes for the year, but I've long since made my pair of sandals last at least five years, and when something finally breaks I replace the pair, so that urge is faint, I'm just aware of it.

November may be hot or may bring desert bitter cold winds under a glaring bright sky, so this is the time of the year to find out where I put the bed blankets in case someone needs to start sleeping with a blanket. And maybe the day will come when I don't have to sleep under a roaring fan. Those nights will be extraordinarily quiet (except for the sound of the San Diego freeway a mile away, whose noise never stops, so I pretend it's a river) and when my sprinklers come on in my little garden patch out front at two a.m. I listen for that five minutes, pretending it's rain. My second sleep cycle is always deeper after that.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Cooking. (I just made a plum galette! Pie for breakfast is such a good thing.) And a second me-too on the school supplies. In fact, I'm planning on going to buy notebooks today.

[ellarien]

I'm not sure I actually buy more stationery at this time of year any more, but the urge is definitely there, along with the desire to start new projects and learn new skills and, yes, buy new clothes.

Fall here, though, means that the air is cool in the morning and evening, and that it becomes possible to contemplate taking walks again, and think about serious housework.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Obviously, I find the allure of new fall clothes impossible to resist. But I have another fall urge: rose-buying. It's time to lose myself in rose catalogs and order new beauties to try out in my backyard. No one will ship roses in the summer so September is always very exciting.

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

I seem to have finally gotten over my fall urges to sharpen lots of pencils. Now I stuff myself on apples and nuts, drink hot tea, and read the Territorial Seed catalog. And I get an atavistic urge to make sure my pantry and freezer are full.

This is often the time of year when I think about trying my hand at some form of textile arts. Sometimes this works out (needlework) and sometimes not so much (knitting). This year I've been thinking speculatively about some soft sculpture projects.

And I scoop up horse chestnuts and bring them home for my mantel. They're so pretty.

My favorite season

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

I get clothes-buying urges: fall colors are the ones I like the best. I can buy for winter, and if I'm lucky there will still be short-sleeved lighter-weight stuff I can have for the next warm season, when all they'll be selling is pastels.

Cooking urges. It will soon be getting cool enough to cook and eat again. I love fall vegetables, and stews and soups that are ridiculous in summer.

I can spend more time outside, too, because the pollen is fading away.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

As we live out in the country, I do buy a lot of canned and otherwise preserved food, as well as bottling more water, but that's an intentional action. The urge that hits me every Fall is to start stocking up on books to read through the winter, and I go on book-buying sprees. Never mind that I've already got 3K in the house and literally hundreds I haven't read yet...I realize by the time October is done that I've usually bought about two-dozen more books (at least) since the first September chill breeze.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Well, there's the urge to shuffle my feet through great drifts of dry leaves (a college friend invented the verb "to fromple" to describe this leaf-shuffling thing.) and eating fall fruit like apples or pomegranates (mmmm, pomegranates!). And lighting fires in the fireplace. And dry-cleaning all my sweaters, or maybe consigning them to Goodwill and buying new ones.

We're Jewish, and the fall is full of Jewish holidays that inspire compulsions of actually going to religious services (I'm usually pretty lackadaisical about that during the year, though we do home worship stuff). But each holiday inspires special compulsions:

Rosh Hashanah inspires making lots of sweets. Or at least cooking a big dinner for lots of friends. And there's a tradition of eating fruits that you haven't had in months and months, so Rosh Hashanah also inspires buying the first pomegranate of the fall (did I mention the pomegranates?).

Yom Kippur inspires apologizing a lot to people, because God absolves you for your sins agains God but if you've wronged your fellow person, you have to go to that person and apologize and make it right.

Sukkot (which is a harvest festival that supposed to involve putting up outdoor temporary booths that you eat your meals in) inspires the occasional attempt to lunch al fresco. Of course, here by Seattle, that means either eating in the rain or sharing your lunch with yellowjackets. After the yellowjackets swarm my salad, I am re-inspired to eat indoors.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I've been keeping an eye out for a blazer. Three requirements: that it go with black pants (extra points for going with khaki, brown, navy or loden as well); that it not cost a fortune; and that it be fabulous. Today I found it. I was expecting it to be tweedy, with a variety of colors, or maybe paisley and embroidered, but instead it's rosy red in a felted (?) wool that's thick and cozy but weighs nothing. (here (http://www1.talbots.com/talbotsonline/item.asp?item=E04589&PFID=1424&BID=S2005260195312CCEEC5B56E0E4CDD9B1130&h=M) it is, in fact, though the pomegranate color is much nicer in person.

Onlyl problem is it doesn't quite meet criterion #2 and I'm not convinced I want to spend $248 on a jacket right now, with career plans somewhat in the air and while I'm still hemorraging money on flying. Maybe as a finishing-IFR presen for myself.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

Apples from Jacks Apple Orchard in Lakeville.


YUM!

Then apple sauce.


I never really get to buy clothes, so I am pretty clueless on that front. What are the colors this season?

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I have the same "school supplies" impulse, and I know many others who have it as well. I also end up eyeballing backpacks, which I have absolutely no use for.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I need to get a couple sweaters this fall. Nothing fancy, but comfy and soft. Mmmm. I love a good sweater, and right now I have nothing I'm happy with.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

NO sweaters you're happy with???

How can this be?????

I'm going to sit somewhere quiet and rock for a few minutes while I calm myself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They're going for warm autumnal colors, browns and burgundies and deep purples. Yum.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Camping for Mrissas is when you go all the way down to the hotel restaurant for your breakfast.

Which is fine enough in fall, I suppose. I like hiking, but camping, not so much.

Also, sitting in the creek in Minnesota in October? Not recommended.

I like paper, though. Mmmm, paper. What I miss in fall is lab notebooks. All fresh and square-y.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I listen for that five minutes, pretending it's rain.

I'm glad it makes you sleep more peacefully, but it sounds so sad to me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And these bloom the next June or when? I don't know much about growing things here, but I know even less about growing things out there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I was going to say my book-buying urge is not seasonal, but that's not strictly true. It goes on an annual ebb and flow around holidays, the urge peaking in July and December, when I'm not allowed to buy books, the actual purchases peaking in June and November, when I know I'm soon not allowed to buy books.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sometimes harvest festivals make one glad not to be quite so immediately dependent upon the harvest, yes.

I think if Christians had a festival of apologies, I'd end up baking a lot for it, too: what says "I'm sorry" like a pan of fudge or a basket of rosemary buns?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It makes rain all the more exciting and wondrous if it does come. Even a brief five minute sweep can make the ground and air smell so incredibly good.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

Oooooh. Colors I actually like.

Awesome.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I was going to say, colors you and I can both wear despite differences in coloring. It's good.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

*nod* Yes, very good. =)

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

I start looking at trees more frequently, checking to see if they're suddenly different than I last remember.

And I get the urge to run again, because crisp, sunny, fall days (with lots of leaves on the ground) are the best days to go out for a run. Fortunately for me, we mostly get gray or rainy, crisp fall days.

Oh, and I start eying my sweaters hopefully.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Most of the year--aside from my occasional jaunts through the Barnes & Noble bargain books section--I buy books with intentional specificity. This time of year, though, I start wandering through used bookstores over and over and over again, generally grabbing whatever catches my fancy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yesterday in the car, I said to markgritter, "Soon I will get to wear my real clothes again." By which I mostly mean sweaters.