Fall is a time to reflect and be thankful

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As we closed the door on yet another beautiful September, life shifts into a different gear. My hubby baled up a fourth crop of hay and put it in the barn on a gloriously sunny final Saturday of September.

Our sweet daughter came one day and helped me organize and clean up the garage, the catch-all of life’s overflow, and we put the swimming pool to bed for the winter. I swept away the clutter of summer, knocking crops of spider webs from the porches of this old house.

Fall harvest

Combines of various color and size all around us run soybeans from morning until way past bedtime, the work never stopping. September closes and October opens. Yet another summer season has come and gone, a gentle tapping on the shoulder, reminding us that time is passing.

We never know how many seasons we will be given, and there is something bittersweet in autumn’s air. Every sunny, perfect day is tempered with the realization it may be the last of its kind for awhile. We have lived through enough seasons to know that winter’s fury is coming on the heels of all this beauty.

Enjoying our time

There is so much to be done, and we best get to it all before it’s too late. If only we lived our lives with this realization, putting our priorities in order, enjoying what is given with a deeper sense of gratitude.

Every season of life is fleeting. I stand in the season of life in which the landscapes we have developed shift and change, but the gifts of a new generation is welcoming us in to a new chapter.

My nephews and a niece each blessed our family with a new baby this year, and I enjoy my rocking chair time with those tiny bundles, each one a miraculous blessing.

“We are going to be pals,” I say to the blue-eyed baby who looks in to my eyes, coos at me and smiles for the first time, and hooks my heart right around her tiny little finger.

She is such a wee bit of a being, but somehow she has managed to lift me up. Amazing how that works, isn’t it?

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Judith Sutherland, born and raised on an Ohio family dairy farm, now lives on a 70-acre farm not far from the area where her father’s family settled in the 1850s. Appreciating the tranquility of rural life, Sutherland enjoys sharing a view of her world through writing. Other interests include teaching, reading, training dogs and raising puppies. She and her husband have two children, a son and a daughter, and three grandchildren.

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