Out here, where the roads are named after the family farms, we slide into the quiet season.
It’s all warm colors here at Adams Farm: yellows and reds and oranges. A few greens, but mostly the rustic hue of autumn.
The textures are everywhere, from smooth pumpkins and apples to mottled squashes of every different shape and size.
We’re crazy about the foods of autumn. I could live on apples and squash, while the kids transform into sticky hornet magnets with cider and donuts. We wipe our hands of cinnamon and sugar, we feel for the rigid pumpkin stems, and we toss the bumpy buttercup from crate to wagon.
This is what we live for – the texture of the season.
It’s almost like all this is a bit too cool for Jackson.
International mural artists? Tons of people downtown? Beauty where once there was empty brick?
It all happened, thanks to the Bright Walls mural festival, this past week. But really, it started months ago with one of the best marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t go anywhere in town without seeing that sunrise-and-brick logo. The campaign worked, too, because people – both Jackson natives and out-of-towners – showed up in droves, slowing down traffic in an otherwise sleepy downtown.
Maybe it’s obvious, but here, right in front of all of us, was the power of art on display. It was a spectacle, sure, but it was also a reason to celebrate.
This is usually our springtime ritual, heading to the Hobbit Place, grabbing flowers and thinking about landscape decorations.
For this year, we went full autumn: mums, pumpkins, decorative gourds – the whole thing. As a Tolkien fan, I love the greenhouse’s name. As a person who cares about their yard, I appreciate their selection.
Tick tock goes the beat of the year. On and on we slide into fall.
After our Wisconsin summer vacation, I had the thought to take the photos from the trip and make a little picture book out of them.
This week, I did just that after receiving a discount email from Snapfish. Just $12 for an 8×11″ book with 20 pages? Sold.
I rarely jump on those deals when I get them, but once in a while the opportunity and the idea come together to make something happen.
There are a ton of photo printing companies out there, just begging you to make something. These places are constantly sending out coupons and discounts. Test a few out, see what you like, and then wait for the sale emails to come in. It’s too affordable not to something.
It was about 7:45 p.m. Saturday when I swore for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
That first time, it was because Michigan, early on, was looking paltry against Notre Dame, and the weatherman kept interrupting the football game to tell us a thunderstorm was heading toward Jackson.
After that, I swore because a tornado was making a mess of our neighborhood – just 15 minutes later.
The second time I swore was because I watched a giant oak limb fall into our street, snapping the power lines and cutting our electricity. I don’t remember what exactly I said, but it was enough for my wife to spring into action, grabbing the kids and heading to the basement.
After that, it was a blur: torrential rain, downed limbs, no power, giant trees snapped in two, and a little crowd of drenched birds, shivering and frightened, gathered around a spared maple.
With the power gone, we made the best of our quiet night in the house. The next morning, we woke up to a new view of the sky: those majestic oaks that shaded our house were gone, as was a hunk of the magnolia in the back yard. It covered our dining room window, making it feel like we were in the middle of a hedgerow.
We were lucky. Our neighbors got the worst of it, losing most of their front yard trees and a few others – plus it was their power line I watched get cut in two. A block down, a street fell across the street, smashing a Cutlas Sierra. Another oak fell on top of a house, the trunk teetering like a seesaw. Strangely, a block or two in either direction, it looked like no storm had come through at all. Just our luck.
So we spent the next two days cleaning up from the confirmed tornado. Much like some John Mellenkamp song, we were small town people helping our neighbors, chipping in with a rake or a chainsaw when we could.
As with any vacation, getting back home feels like you never left. Even with a week and a modest agenda, time flies on holiday.
But we certainly made the best of it. One or two things per day, venturing out and about this peninsula, we felt like we went on enough adventures while still managing three kiddos.
For my photographic eyes, it was plenty. Those red cherries, that blue Great Lake, those violet lavender blossoms, the golden sunsets, and – just like Michigan – plenty of green everywhere we went.
Two out of the three kids would probably never remember this family vacation. For me, it was memorable enough to consider creating a photo book of our summer trip – a reminder of where we went and what we saw. And perhaps a reminder for if and when we consider this place again.
