I woke up last night to the lullaby of rain on the roof. Gentle rain. Peaceful rain. No hail, no devastating winds. Just music on the roof. We woke to 2 inches in the rain gauge and another inch has fallen since. It it one of those turning-inward kinds of days, where outside chores are accomplished as quickly as possible, and the oven and stove and dehydrator all warm the house and fill it with the tastes and smells of the season.

But fall really is less of a season and more of a sense, or an over-abundance of the senses. It is the time of gathering in, of putting up, of savoring and preserving.

The color palate shifts, in one last glorious display before the long winter sleep, as the last of the flowers send up their leaves and open their buds, and the trees, which in summer are a wonderful backdrop of green, burst into the most vivid of colors in a center-stage kind of a way. Living right inside the treeline of what becomes the Black Hills National Forest a little further west, a ponderosa pine forest, the hardwoods hide until the fall, at which point they come out of hiding in flamboyant style.

The last of the harvest is trickling in – the last of the fruit tasted sun-warm off the vine, the last of the shaking of the branches, the last eaten while perched in the branches to reach just one more. But even when the last of the harvest has trickled in, the work still isn’t done, and it continues in a pleasant flurry. The whirr of the dehydrator, the bubbling of the waterbath canner, the tastes and aromas of the summer, preserved for the winter. Every countertop surface is a chaos of things preserved and things to be preserved – The jams and jellies from the abundance of wild fruit, summertime salsas from the garden, enough to last us through next summer, bags and bags of dehydrated apples and zucchini, and jars of glassed eggs to get us through the winter slump. It is a delectable time of the year!

Flowers I thought wouldn’t bloom after the August hailstorm wiped out the gardens have flourished in the interim. One last bouquet was hastily cut last night, on the eve of what could still turn into our first winter storm if the temps drop tonight. Herbs were gathered in quickly – mint and thyme and lavender and dill – and are bundled neatly to dry.

But the savor of the season is mixed with the sweetness of routine – Baskets of eggs fresh from the coop, loaves of fresh bread, still warm.

Daily walks in the freshness of autumn, with a passel of dogs.

The company of a good pup.

Kittens in the barn, shades of cinnamon and the one little white one.

The view between a horse’s ears.

A certain pair of eyes in a sun-browned face.

Quiet evenings.

Beautiful sunrises.

Winter will be here before we know it. It is storing up the joy of times like this that keep the winter blues at bay. So I’m just listening to the whisper of the rain on the roof, and soaking it all in.