October Post #3

              Autumn Leads to Other Seasons

                                               Seasonal Shifts

Autumn colours with resplendent hue

Twirling leaves

Remind me of you

A misty hush over the land

Matured fruit

For your last stand

You had seen the seasons through

Dropped gently

Your time was due

Winter was harshly stark

Watery light

Unfathomably dark

Numbing feeling, icy touch

Dead inside

Pain too much

Suddenly the ice did crack

Cracked asunder

I didn't hold back

Slowly spring began to dawn

Warming sun

Not so forlorn                                                   

The creeping of life anew

Treasured memories

Aware of you

Sitting constantly on my shoulder

Awaiting summer glory

As I get older. 

Written by Eileen Moynihan  From her book Dipping Into the Font  Thank you, Eileen.

Last month I wrote about the origin of the Jack-O-Lantern.  This is Carl Sandburg's thoughts on the symbol of Halloween.

Theme in Yellow

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn,

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs                                                          

And love to the harvest moon:

I am a jack-o-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

Aileen L. Fisher wrote FALL

The last of October

We lock the garden gate

(The flowers have all withered

That used to stand straight.)

The last of October

We put the swings away

And the porch looks deserted

Where we liked to play.

The last of October

The birds have all flown,

The screens are in the attic,

The sandpile's alone:

Everything is put away

Before it starts to snow-

I wonder if the ladybugs

Have any place to go!

Thank you to Dwyane Smith and Lisa Lambert for your kind compliments on my September and October Blogs.  The next Blog will be about Halloween.   Anyone with Halloween scary ideas, but not too scary?

Last Weeks Riddle: In front of you are three closed metal boxes.  One is labeled "Nuts", one is labeled "Bolts", and one is labeled "Nuts & bolts".  You know that every box is incorrectly labeled and you would like to rearrange the labels so that each box is correct.

By making only one selection from one box, how can you be sure to properly re-label each box?

Answer: The key to this riddle is the fact that all of the boxes are labeled incorrectly.

The way to correctly label all of the boxes with only one selection is to reach into the box labeled "Nuts & Bolts" and pull something out.  Suppose you pull out a bolt, which means that that box must be "Bolts", you now know that the remaining two boxes are "Nuts" and "Nuts &bolts" but since the "Nuts" box is labeled incorrectly it must be the "Nuts & Bolts" and the "Bolts" box then must actually be "Nuts". 

New Riddle: You are making some French toast for breakfast.  In order to cook a perfect piece of French toast, you must fry each side of the slice of bread for thirty seconds.  You only have one frying pan and it can only hold two slices of bread at a time.

How quickly can you make three perfect slices of French toast?