One of the last weekends of fall

It's a gorgeously sunny day, though chilly -- about 50 degrees, with most of the leaves off the trees; you can feel winter's teeth gently beginning to nip. I worked on the end-of-season yard-cleaning chores: my flowerbed is brown and bare, my garden pots and tools tucked away for another year. We have a nice big pile of coal and we've started stoking the boiler again ... during the summer, as always, I'd blissfully forgotten how much "fun" it is to inhale a choking cloud of coal smoke, not to mention having to re-learn how to duck fireballs when the boiler decides to singe my eyebrows off. (When the door to the firebox is closed, the coals simmer along in a state of benign oxygen deprivation, but the rush of oxygen-rich air when the door's opened to feed or stir the fire can cause a backblast in the face of the hapless door-opener. Hence my patented "open and duck" technique.)

I love fall, and I actually do like winter, perhaps in self-defense since we just have so MUCH of it; but I do really love the feeling of being warm and cozy inside when it's cold and unpleasant outside. And I like the way this time of year makes me feel: energized with the brisk air, and all fired up to start making stuff for the holidays and filling up the house with nice baking smells. Hmm, maybe I'll go make cookies or something; it seems like a nice day for that.