I love the smell of wood-fires in the afternoon. It smells like . . . October.

This afternoon we drove over to a local garden center for pumpkins. The air was cool but not too crisp and the sun felt warm, bringing out the now fading and and falling colors of the trees. As we walked through aisles of pumpkins, I could smell that someone had a fire burning nearby. haddayr , as she usually does , looked for an interesting pumpkin, which meant that it had an unusual shape or was in some way scarred. I looked for a pumpkin that was large enough to carve easily. There was an interesting juxtaposition of criteria the boys used in choosing their pumpkins. Arie, as I did when I was his age, looked for the biggest pumpkin he could find. He went from gourd to gourd, comparing sizes until he found the right one. Éiden, on the other hand, wanted a pumpkin that was small enough that he could carry himself. He chose one just smaller than his head and carried it proudly to our cart (and later to the house). The pumpkins sit on our porch now, until next weekend when we'll carve them. Next up: decorating the house, which the boys have been nagging me to do for the past two days.