Wild Things

I have been at the Nature Park all day where we have been getting ready for our Halloween event - which is tomorrow night rather than at Halloween - and is called Wild Things. A small army of Chinese students have carved pumpkins, literally hundreds of them to be put around the trails. Lori, Jo and I have erected a tent with lights in it, put up spiders webs and built and lit a witches' cavern.
We also went to Tim Hortons' for coffee to avoid the army of pumpkin carvers.

The most beautiful of the autumn colours are yet to come, the Maple leaves are beyond description and I do mean that in the literal sense, because last year I tried. But right now, the blueberry bushes are red and they look spectacular. Other trees are a golden yellow, so vivid, as though they are at the turning moment of their final exhalation, you can almost feel them holding their breath, which when released will let fall their rich October colours in favour of the stark blacks and greys of November.

The squirrels were rushing about hiding anything they can find anywhere they can. They can never remember where they've put them though, so we have oak saplings growing in unlikely places.
We saw a couple of hardy ladybirds today and a garter snake was spotted, but most of the creatures are making their preparations for winter.

Yesterday, someone made the observation to me that now they no longer used salt in cooking or added it at the table, they tended to have a craving for salty food every so often. I agreed. We don't even own a cruet set. Kevin will sparingly salt food during cooking, but from time to time, I too crave salty food.
The opposite however seems to be true for sugary food. The more you eat, the more you crave, the less you eat, the less you crave it. I wondered about this, after all, if we went back to basics and only ate what nature intended, we would get sweetness but I couldn't see how we would get saltiness. From blood maybe? From not cleaning all the soil from our vegetables ? Haven't worked that one out yet.

Right now, Kevin is roasting pumpkin seeds, the part of all those pumpkins that would otherwise have been thrown away, to satisfy my need for salt, and damn fine they will be too.