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The weather has been so cold I don’t think I’ve stepped out in to my backyard in weeks. And when it’s not cold, it’s raining, so the ground is saturated.  When I look out the back windows, everything looks so gray and bare compared to lush colors of the spring and summer.  I see that the squirrels have knocked over the bird bath again in their attempt to jump up to the bird feeder. As a matter of fact I’m overdue to refill the feeder, so I guess I’ll have to get myself into the backyard soon to take care of it and have a good look at the rest of the yard while I’m at it.

When I look at the winter yard, it makes me miss spending warm evenings on the back porch, though it doesn’t make me miss the mosquitos which come uninvited every year. We’ll need to spruce up some plants this spring, and trim back a few overgrown bushes. Our vegetable patch was pretty sad last year, so we’re going to have the soil tested this year before we do any planting. Yes, I’m looking forward to a beautiful warm spring.

It seems everywhere I look these days there are pumpkins for sale. I don’t recall seeing them everywhere when I was younger, and certainly not in September. It seemed they used to just be around closer to Halloween rather than over one month before the holiday. And they were only in a few places, like a garden center or a pick-your-own farm. Or maybe that’s just how I recall it. Now I see them outside every grocery store, gas station, home supply store - you name it. Beautiful mum plants too that are hard to resist. It makes me wonder where they are all being grown.

So now I have to fight the urge to buy them too soon, especially the mums since I like them to last until Thanksgiving and if I buy them too soon they look pretty sad by the time late November rolls around. In the meantime I think I’ll concentrate on cleaning up my messy yard and putting away some of the decorations before the cold weather arrives. Then I can go wild and buy some of the beautiful fall decorations I can’t seem to resist.