What a beautiful end-of-summer it has been. After a struggle with the yearly grasshopper infestation early on, and a number of summer storms that threatened hail and definitely left their mark, after weeks of witheringly hot weather, the end-of-summer sweetened through September and into this beginning-of-fall. And now it is October, and the first of the real fall weather happened as suddenly as that turn of the calendar page. We know it is coming, but it always happens more suddenly than we expect, even when we’re anticipating it.

And with that sweet end-of-summer and beginning-of-fall comes all the work and the reward that is the harvest season.

The simple bounty of fresh-picked fruits, plums and apples and wonderful-ripe tomatoes, flame-colored pumpkins and whimsical blue Jarrahdales, and of course baskets of fresh eggs – It is humbling and enlivening and fosters a sense of connectedness to the past. To a simpler time. To, in many ways, a more challenging time, but a time of reliance upon and deep appreciation for God’s earth, and the bounty that can be cultivated from it, through the work of our hands and sweat of our brow. The experience, the work, the flavors and colors and textures, give me a greater understanding of the Dominion Mandate of Genesis, to fill the earth and subdue it, to cultivate and steward all the bounty and beauty that God lovingly placed here for our good and for His glory.