Trick or Treat?!
Sußes oder Saueres?!
Gosh, this will be the first year in decades that no trick or treaters will ring the bell on Halloween! To think that Cherry has her best Halloween face on too!
The tricks were on me this weekend though, with all the rain we had on Saturday. There was a short break in the downpour, which allowed me to do the laundry – yes! with sunshine and wind, so everything dried in under three hours. Alas, that is all a distant memory today, as the clouds decided to burst again. By noon I could no longer see the valley and the Shire was completely engulfed in clouds again.
Nevertheless, I won’t get the weather dampen my spirits. Even though all my halloween decorations are currently in storage in Berlin, my mother taught me to use what I had around the house to make it festive. You don’t need to spend anything to jazz things up for Halloween. And no, it doesn’t have to be spooky either, that is a corruption of modern media. When my daughter was growing up I used all her stuffed toys in the decorations so that she would appreciate the holiday and not be spooked by the creepy things that are more popular. So we stuck to that for the past 24 years and I don’t regret it. Here is my tableau for this year:
This year I used butternut squash instead of pumpkins, and added apples and pomegranate. Note the LED candles instead of the regular ones, as Madam Cherry constantly pokes her non-existent nose into everything these days. The decoration is small, simple and reflective of my new life, but still celebrating the holiday in my own little way. While typing this, The Good Witch is running in the background, so there is a lot of good energy throughout the house. Dinner was something unusual for me – a soup.
Let me tell you a story about my relationship with soups. Because of my birth defect (hare lip and cleft palate), I always struggled with soups, as it put me in embarrassing situations as a child, so I avoided them like the plague. Then I had several summers that were spent only in hospitals for more surgeries, and during those traumatic months, my lips were sewn shut so the surgery could heal properly. Imagine going two months on forced liquid diet and only “eating” through straws! So soups have always held bitter memories of struggle and frustration. Imagine my horror when I married into a family that had a fixed Saturday ritual of soup!
Yesterday, however, I had the sudden urge to make a soup with the gorgeous vegetables the farmer brought me last week. It was an absolutely delight, and I had enough for dinner this evening. Maybe it is the cosiness of the Frobbit House, with the old walls and the roaring fire that makes me re-examine soups. New life, new soup I suppose.
Let me close the entry by sharing a wonderful song that caught my attention and soul this weekend. It captures so much of what I went through, and makes me incredibly grateful for the moment in time I find myself in now. To all those who went through the darkness, you will emerge Brilliant Still. Thank you James Bay, for the lyrics and music.
FrogDiva Thoughts 