Fall and Apples in New England

A beautiful fall with brightly colored leaves is probably the first thing that comes to mind, when somebody thinks of New England. Autumn is my favorite time of year and always has been, I like the crisp air, the morning fog and the atmosphere all over. Autumn is a season for all the senses, the wonderful colors, the noises of crunching leaves with every step, the smell of wood and spices, the taste of apples, the slight chill. Since I moved here six years ago, fall became a necessity for my survival in Massachusetts. Why? Because I do not really enjoy any other season here. Winter is way too long and swallows up spring, just to make way for a hot and miserable summer. So most of the time, I am too cold or I am too hot.

Granted, I love the beginning of winter, when snow turns the outside into a sparkling and hushed world of magic, when one enjoys a toasty fire while telling stories and sipping hot beverages with ‘spike’. By the time February comes and goes I am so done with it. Catalogs of seeds and plants come in the mail and I chuckle - don’t they know I cannot plant before June? And summer? Our house that seems to hold no heat in winter, sure does a good job of it in summer and a good nights sleep is mere wishful thinking. Let’s just say, the nordic blood running through my veins is not made for this latitude. So there we go; fall is the superior season and the best way to enjoy it, is to go apple picking and what is my favorite apple? I think the Roxbury Russet is tied with the Pippin, which we call Cox Orange at home.

And what do we do with all these apples? Since I prefer savory over sweet, I recommend an apple-onion casserole, which goes so well with a turkey or apple pizza, where the tart sweetness of the apple balances the spiciness of sausage and cheese. Coming from a family of apple addicted women, they do not last long in this house. As a child, I would spend hours sitting in my favorite apple tree in the orchard on our farm. I would just sit there and eat apple after apple while reading. it was very relaxing, partially so, because in the previous month, I would sit in the cherry and plum trees, eat those fruits and then realize that I had just had something to drink. Now, I was told by somebody - I do not remember who - that drinking water and eating cherries would lead to your death and as a child, I was so honest, it never occurred to me, that it could not be true. Many times, I would realize that I had a drink of water and then I would just sit there and contemplate my imminent death. In that respect, the apple tree was much more relaxing.

Well, it is time to go outside , take a breath of fresh autumn air and plot with the children which neighbor we want to spook, since we were spooked last night. Spooking is a strange and funny tradition here, where some - unseen - person puts Halloween gifts/treats on your doorstep. Whoever was spooked puts up a sign in the window, because one can only be spooked once. Once you are spooked, you have to find a house that has not been spooked and be the spooker yourself. In essence, it is a kind of anonymous Halloween tag.

The creative curse

I definitely suffer from the creative curse. As curses go, this is probably not a bad one to have, but at times I wish I could turn it off for a moment. A non creative person might react with astonishment to this notion, but I sincerely tell you, it can be a curse. Last week I had one of those days, where it seemed I have an idea every minute of the day. I usually have a lot of ideas and it does not take much for inspiration to hit, but on certain days (usually under pressure), they appear faster than I can think, the brain kind of like a stove top with all five burners on fire at once. The ideas that jump out can be of any kind; a craft, a color to paint the wall, a sculpture for the garden, a present for a friend, a design for a dress or another piece of furniture to build. Often it is an idea for a story or a children’s book and there hops another index card onto messy piles of paperwork. Actually there are index cards everywhere, along with countless files on the computer, aptly called something like ‘even more notes on ideas’. Some of these notes are more than 15 years old and even date back to the time that I worked on an Atari computer.

To be blessed with creativity sounds ideal, but still, it is a curse as well. Imagine every yard I pass I have to landscape in my head or every birthday that is coming up turns into an idea well without bottom. See, the ideas are not really what make the creativity cursed, but rather having an imbalance between the resources of ideas on one side and time and money on the other. Time and money is something I never had excess of and probably never will, but in order to turn the mere figments of my thoughts into something tangible, I need to utilize them.

There is more to the curse though than just the lack of resources, it is an abundance of perfectionism. For example, last week it was my daughter’s birthday and we thought about what she could bring to school for her friends. Not being in favor of treats consisting of starches and/or sugar, I had the idea of giving each kid some marbles, since they could have fun with them at recess and just play rather than being entertained. So we bought a selection of marbles at a special toy store, 5 different ones for every of her class mates. Being a thorough, I did some research on the history of marbles, the making and what games are out there and I also found some nice vintage photos of kids playing with marbles. So I turned this into a nice double sided card in Adobe Illustrator, put the marbles into little baggies which I stapled to the card. By the time I went to bed, it was 3 am and I thought maybe 27 lollypops really would have been easier. I have been called Martha before and I am never sure if this is nice compliment or a bit a teasing, probably both.

I picked the creative curse as my first blog entry, because my perfectionism has kept me from blogging anything yet. I have been writing blogs on a daily basis since about two years, but only in my head and on my index cards though, since I needed it to be perfect and of course never found the time for perfecting it. So on friday while sitting with friends over Butternut squash soup, fresh bread and nice bottle of Ravenswood and discussing my creative curse, two ‘things’ materialized: I should save my perfectionism for my stories and my book writing and just blog away and that my creative curse is really OCD.

Whatever - here it goes, my imperfect Blog!