Autumn!

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I loved autumn,
the one season of the year that God seemed to have put there
just for the beauty of it.
Lee Maynard

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“It’s the first day of autumn!
A time of hot chocolatey mornings,
and toasty marshmallow evenings,
and, best of all, leaping into leaves!”
 Winnie the Pooh, Pooh’s Grand Adventure

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Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that
in the autumn one looks at heaven–
in the spring at the earth.
Soren Kierkegaard

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“How beautifully leaves grow old.
How full of light and color are their last days.”
John Burroughs

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“Use what you have, use what the world gives you.
Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness;
harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire.
Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze,
our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: 
apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash,
cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself.
The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die
are the world’s oldest performance art,
and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah
before the black and white silence of winter.”
Shauna Niequist, 
Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way