In the Gray Zone--Slowing Down

Thanksgiving holiday and finally I have time to slow down.  The past days have been wonderfully gray, and today more so, with rain.
Fall is my favorite season for so many reasons.  Lines from Shakespeare's sonnet play through my mind, especially when I am outdoors, running or--like yesterday--cleaning out the finished tomato and pepper stalks, gathering up fallen branches, and collecting marigold seeds in my coffee can to use again next summer.

 "That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves or none or few do shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet bird sang
In me thou seest the twilight of such day."

Well, I'm not that old really (I don't think anyway!), but I love the image of the leaves, bare branches, and birds.

Our blood oranges are ripening, and the holly is drooping heavy with berries.  I watch each day for birds to come feast on them.  Sometimes robins come get them, but once it was a great flock of the cedar waxwings--a fabulous crested bird with a mask, sweet little tips of red on his wing feathers, and a tail that has a line of yellow like a paint brush barely dipped.  (I always hope for the waxwings!)

Zoomed in on a hornet nest high in a sweet gum tree

Same nest, just not so zoomed in

Because the leaves are down, if you're on the lookout (like I always am, being a bird and overall nature lover), hornet nests that are usually elusive become apparent.  I've seen three big ones just in the last week or so.  I once had a sheet of hornet nest paper.  It's streaky and bark like, made of chewed up plant matter.

Gray seems to be the color theme of the week though.  I am finishing some crochet in predominantly gray, and yesterday struggled with a lining--also gray.  I am NOT a sewer.  My dissatisfaction and impatience with sewing is what keeps me off making more amigurumi, and in lining this bag, I began to wonder why I even thought this might be a good idea.  In fact, now that this bag is next door to finished I'm at the stage where I'm so tired of it, I wonder why I even made it in the first place.  Alas.

It's a point I know I will eventually get past.
It's pumpkin season (and I've got some strange desire to try to crochet a pumpkin), and the color of pumpkin is the essence of fall as well.  So, of course, are the scent of the spices that go into baking pumpkin bread (and pie!): cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg.  Mmm.