An early fall

Well guys, we made it to the last Sunday of August. August is always a difficult month for me because it's not September. Once the July holidays are over, all I can think about is fall. Some years are worse than others, and this year was worse.

But it's practically fall right now. The meteorological season starts on Thursday (September 1), and astronomical fall starts in a few weeks. But yesterday I went on my first trail run since my twisted ankle--and look at what I saw:

(I also ran into a swarm of dragonflies, which is really more Augusty than autumny.

)

And if those aren't enough to convince you, look at what we made yesterday:

One of my favorite days is the day we make grape juice from the grapes growing in our backyard. I start putting out Halloween things in mid-September, and we usually have our Halloween stuff up when we make grape juice. Sometimes we make it close to my birthday at the end of the month. I thought last year was early when we made it in early September. But I think this is the first year we ever made it in August. Sipping on steaming grape juice straight from the juicer just brings happy memories of autumn.

So. Grape juice = autumn. Ergo, it is autumn. Boom.

(But I'm still going to enjoy popsicles for a few more days.)

I thought I'd try something new with our green grapes, so I made this grape tart.

It gets a 9/10 for cuteness. But it only gets a 4/10 for taste and texture, because it was basically eating cooked grapes, and these grapes aren't the best anyway. At least the crust was good.

At this time of year, the only baked goods I can have are items made from fruit from our own yard. We have apricots, plums, and grapes, and my sister has a cherry tree. So this summer, I have made the following items with our free fruit: cherry crisp, cherry-chocolate sorbet that didn't set up, cherry strudel, cherry salsa, apricot crisp, apricot meringue pie, roasted apricot and onion salsa, apricot jam (actually my mom made that), apricot omelet, apricot pudding, plum-rosemary upside-down cake, roasted plum and pudding tart, plum crisp, plum cobbler, grape tart, and grape juice (my mom "made" that one too). I might be missing some. That cookbook I got for my birthday last year, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, has proved very helpful. I don't know whether I'll squeeze anything else out of the remaining produce, other than some more juice.

This week I fell "victim" to the power of advertising. I saw a commercial and I just had to have the t-shirt the guy was wearing, so I ordered it. But the commercial wasn't even about t-shirts. It was about water conservation. Which is even more important, as my groundwater class three years ago taught me.

And so, with the power of advertising, I am going to praise the movie Kubo and the Two Strings, which I saw this week. I think it was only the second movie I saw in a theater this year. It's made by Laika--I saw Boxtrolls and half of Coraline; never saw Paranorman. But I'm going to venture that this one was their best. So. Good. And it's also the cleanest. It is somewhat scary, but there are no bad words or gross things in it. Beautiful.

I started by talking about leaves and ended up talking about movies. Oh well.