Have a great time begging for candy, candy, candy! From all of us in the Shakadoo family, we hope your Halloween is scary and fun!

It seems like there are more pumpkins available this year than last year. They’re looking good, too- nice and round and orange, perfect for carving. And the white pumpkins are readily available this year, too, which adds a nice addition to the usual.

Here’s an awesome carving job at Sitening HQ, taken by Kate O on Flickr.

They’ve been issuing freeze warnings- bring your plants in now, if you haven’t already. I already did, myself, and I spent some time this weekend helping my dad bring his plants inside. It’s like a weird jungle inside my dad’s house with all his plants. Mine is a bit more simple than that.

Somehow, to me, bringing the plants inside makes me a bit sad. Summer is definitely, absolutely over.

Lotsa good info here!

I’m not even putting a picture in this post because I want to draw attention to it. Go read this about the state of farming and food in America. It’s something everyone needs to read and know. That is all.

When looking through my flickr contacts’ pictures, I saw this one and it reminded me of my uncle. Every autumn he’d say, "It’s time for a fall ramble" and he’d take me and any other cousins that wanted to go down to Brown County Indiana to go hike and look at the fall leaves.

There’s something that’s satisfying deep down in the soul to go crunching through the leaves, the weather crisp. The words of James Whitcomb Riley come to mind, "WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock"

Yep, it’s that time again. Time to ramble.

As you all know, I love me some good garden photos. I was linked to this Flickr user this morning and I’m so impressed. They took a photo a day of various aspects of the garden. These pictures are really beautiful and I had a great time looking at them. Go check it out!

Funny, I went to the Tennessee Aquarium on Saturday and took a bazillion pictures of fish, but the best picture I took was this one, in the butterfly room. Go figure.

They had a room filled with butterflies with all kinds of plants designed to attract the butterflies. It was really amazing to see so many butterflies in one place. This summer was a good one for seeing butterflies, but this was something else entirely.

2 out of my 3 kids are born in the fall, as am I and my husband and my dad and both of my grandmas (although one’s not with us anymore). It seems like a magical time to me, with pumpkins and apple pies and apple cider and the leaves turning. Just the crisp smell of it makes me cheery.

My daughter noticed it too. She asked me if the air felt different. It’s still in the mid-80s so it’s not necessarily the weather. I do think it’s just the fact that it’s autumn. I’m so glad it’s here, wish it could stay.