Autumn - giving thanks.

Pumpkin Perfection
c. Gillian Cornwall

 This is a perfect late September day. The morning air cool as a reminder of the harvest days ahead. I throw my mind one hundred and fifty years to the past and envision myself on pastoral lands and villages built of the the stones dug from the fields by which they stand. 

Simpler times are what I crave, time spent in a kitchen preparing food for the winter months - a pot of soup set upon the stove, bubbling with the goodness picked steps from the cottage door. I know I've idolized it and it was work, hard work then, but was there not more time, more direct contact with our needs and survival? I want to go right to the farm for the food upon my table but the journey to the farm has become a treat, a special occasion, an adventure too far without a car so I wait for the times when I will be taken there and I dream of the land, the red leaves of the blueberry bushes in the distance and the song of the sheep and the cattle. I dream of the sensation of the cool, earth-damp squash or potato in my hands, fresh from the ground below my feet. 

It is autumn and I recognize the gifts from the land. Fill my glass with BC wine and I will lay a dish before you replete with the wonder of this place, my home.

-Gillian Cornwall, September 25, 2012.

The Blueberry Fields of West Saanich
c. Gillian Cornwall