Seasonal Splendor

Even on a slightly hazy morning, the drive back from the hardware store featured a landscape of almost fluorescent colors on the mountain behind the cabin.

Autmn beauty is a fleeting thing here in the Virginia Highlands, a good year giving us at best three weeks of polychromy.  This year we had about a fortnight plus a day or two.

Hard to not be distracted when this is the view from the window.

During that fat fortnight the drive up the road and the view outside the shop windows was glorious.

Another splendiferous happening during autumn in these parts is the annual making of apple butter the old-fashioned way. Twice we have been able to go to our friends Pat and Valerie to help cook, stir, and can apple butter in accordance with Pat’s mom’s recipe (I think), using a giant copper-lined cauldron resting above a wood fire.  This year we had brilliant, crisp days for the event and garnered almost 150 pints each day.

The assembly line firing on all cylinders.

Perhaps the truest from of magnificence on these days is when we got to scrape caramelized apple butter off the bottom of the cauldron with fresh biscuits and popping the treat into our mouths.

Words do not suffice.