Happy Autumn Equinox!

What a lovely way for Mother Nature to celebrate my favorite holiday: the sun is shining, but there's a slight crisp to the air and a gentle breeze blowing through the leaves that are starting their yearly wardrobe change. I started the day by harvesting from the garden. The carrots were ready to be pulled, as were handfuls of green beans and a few lemon cucumbers -- YUM!

We had an early celebration this past Friday, by going to our favorite fair, the Common Ground Fair. It's THE state's biggest and bestest agricultural fair. The weather that day was gorgeous, too, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I'd been stashing a bit of money here and there, leading up to the day, so we were able to buy things we'd had our hearts set-on for years past without any feelings of budget-guilt. I bought myself a pair of hand carders, a drop spindle and a bag of gorgeous Romney wool. Hubby bought two American Chestnut trees which are now planted in the front field. Plus we stuffed ourselves with organic goodness: loaded sausage dogs, french fries and strawberry shortcakes -- again, YUM!! It was a fantastic day.












The latest pear-cookery comes in the form of cookies! Using this recipe makes a gently-sweet pear oatmeal cookie. The recipe says it makes 4 1/2 dozen cookies, but my batch made almost 7 dozen! I definitely have to make them bigger next time... having them mouth-pop-in-able is toooo much temptation to keep eating them!