Autumnal thoughts...

Fall doesn't descend. It seeps slowly over the landscape and into the human spirit as thick summer air with its sweet perfume is swept away by cooler breezes tinged with the aroma of decay and smoke. Gradually you begin to bend inward, and one day you are surprised to find yourself immersed in yourself. Time is what there is most of in the fall. Like spring, autumn is a wrinkle, some days taut and other days loose, between summer and winter. It is a season of waiting and subtle foreboding, hence a season in slow motion rift with yearning. The cook becomes an alchemist. She turns the hard into the yielding, the dry into something unctuously moist, brings the dead back to life, finds the buried caramel or honey in the bitterness. All in her own sweet time.

Molly O'Neill, from "A Well-Seasoned Appetite"