Ten Days of Little Celebrations - November 2013

Over a year ago I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and the habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations;’ here are my top 10 for November 2013 - grouped into themes.

Seasonal Food

Pumpkin bake. One way I celebrate fall is to bake a whole pumpkin. It happens almost every year. The one this year was a little larger than usual - purchased at Home Depot; it was a bright orange decoration for our front porch for a few weeks before I decided to cook it. The color deepened after it baked for an hour or so. I cut a wedge, scooped away the seeds and stringy part from the center, and enjoyed it drizzled with butter and cinnamon. Then I divided the rest of the usable pulp into smaller portions - half for the freezer and half for more immediate pumpkin related celebrations.

Pumpkin and Yogurt Custard. It’s worth celebrating when a culinary experiment works; this one did although I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to duplicate it. I roughly followed the pumpkin custard recipe but used plain non-fat yogurt rather than milk, a non-calorie granular sweetener, and more eggs than usual. It developed a sugary crust that was very appealing!

Pumpkin and Ginger Scones. I had never made scones before but decided to try the recipe I posted in my gleanings a few weeks ago. There are two causes to celebrate: these particular scones are really good and scones are incredibly easy to make in a food processor (why did it take me so long to discover this?).

Pumpkin seed oil. It’s green! It’s yummy! I’ve started drizzling it over a mini-pita - making a fancy design like they do in high end restaurants.

Pomegranate. In the past few years - pomegranates have become part of the Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration for me. It is their season to be plentiful in the stores and I like to think of them as the ‘jewels’ of the season.

Outdoors in the Fall

Foliage. The play of colors in the forest is the grand celebration before winter starkness.

Hike to the Patapsco. Walking through fields and forest on a crisp fall day is a more active way to celebrate the season.

Elementary School Nature Field Trips. I celebrated during every hike I led for elementary school field trips over the past month. What a privilege it is to share their first experiences: milkweed, black walnuts, wooly caterpillars, maple leaves changing color, the rocks of a stone wall between fields.

Raking Leaves. I prefer raking to blowing the leaves that fall too thickly on the ground. Raking is quiet work so I hear the birds and squirrels while I enjoy the leaves that still retain their color. They smell like rich forest tea the leaf mulch will become over the winter. There is a nostalgic celebration in raking leaves since the activity is the beginning of the end for fall.

Amanda Cross mysteries. I always celebrate finding a new author. All three Cross books I’ve read so far area already favorites….and there 11 more to go!

Hike to the Patapsco River

I joined a group to hike from the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm to the Patapsco River (Patapsco Valley State Park). We hiked along the farm's cut grass trail, then through a field of cut hay…to the forest. 

A stone marker from 1800 shows the boundary of the Mt. Pleasant Farm.

The undulations of the path took us up and down but averaged ‘down’ on the way to the river and ‘up’ on the way back.

The leaves had fallen - obliterating the trail and smaller fallen limbs. We scrambled over larger deadfall and churned the deep leaf mulch on the inclines. The moss was so green against the dulling brown of the leaves that it sometimes seemed to glow. In fact - any bit of green is eye catching in the late fall forest.

The river view was on the other side of railroad tracks. We listened for a train whistle but only a maintenance vehicle came along the track while we were there. Horsetails grew through the rocks of the rail bed on the river side. Sycamores grow along the river - taking on their white ‘ghost tree’ look of winter now that their leaves were gone.

There were a few examples of shelf fungus that I noticed on the hike back.

The beech trees with their smooth bark were the most frequent tree along the streams down to the river. Some of the trees still held a few leaves. I like the look of the tree trunks of varying sizes in the forest nearly devoid of foliage.