Goodbye Indian Summer... (and a few other things)

Goodbye Indian Summer...
You will be missed.

I will miss the way that your warm, soft light carressed my skin.

The way your azure sky dazzled my eyes.

The sweet and spicy smell of the leaves in the sun.

Tomorrow there will be rain.
 And cooler temperatures will be here to stay.

But Indian Summer lives on in my heart.

I LOVE FALL!!!

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Daughter #4 took this picture of our Moonshadow Hyacinth Beans that I planted in Mid July. 

I knew that they would never make beans--but they are so beautiful in flower that I couldn't resist. I never really got to put in a garden and so I was overwhelmed with desire to plant something!! My Uncle gave me the seeds when we were at his house after my Grandma's funeral in October of 2008. He called them "Jefferson Beans" because Thomas Jefferson grew them in his gardens at Monticello. I had been wanting to order some but since they are mostly ornamental (the bean pods can be stir fried while small but they become poisonous when they are mature and beyond) I always spent my money on more sensible seeds. I'm so glad that he gave these to me and that I decided to grow some--even if it was only for a few short months and without any harvest. I still have enough seeds left to plant this coming spring too. My uncle was very generous. :-)

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A really cool thing happened last night.  I had one of my lifelong, heartfelt desires fulfilled!!  And I wasn't even aware of it at the time!!... 

My daughters were walking outside at about 8pm or so and called me to come out and see this weird sight.  The sky was glowing red to the north.  We have a lot of light pollution from the neighbors dusk to dawn lights so it was pretty faint.  It really was weird!!  I thought that maybe they had a light on that was reflecting off of their red barn and that maybe that was reflecting off of moisture in the air or something.  Then today we discovered from some news articles that what we had seen was Aurora Borealis!!

This picture was taken in Independence, MO courtesy of Tobias Billings that I found on NASA's site.

What we saw was much duller and not nearly as visable.  But I know now, it really was aurora borealis!!  It's cloudy tonight so we won't be able to see it again if it comes down this far.  :-(  I'm just so thankful that we got to see it at all!!  Even if I didn't know what it was at the time.