Deep into the heart of September, there is sun on goldenrod...moonlight on the last of the now-bent garden scarecrows...morning spider webs wet with pearly morning fog...a lost cricket in my kitchen...a quilt folded at the end of my bed as temperatures shake off the summer heat...and night coming earlier.

This week end was the Johnny Appleseed Festival in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The gravesite (so they say) of legendary Johnny Appleseed is located. What grade school child grows up without knowing his story? Wearing a pot on his head, traveling by foot from town to country planting seeds and sharing stories. So for two days we celebrate in Fort Wayne...the heart of Johnny Appleseed country with delights to every sense.

It is a wonderful venue for my storytelling. I have been telling stories there for so many years that young couples come up to me with their own young children and tell me they want them to grow up under my stories just as they have done. I look at them and at the children and wonder how time can pass so quickly that I have reached another generation. And yet...how fortunate I am that my work, my craft has survived through all the changes in my own life.

I love the festival...I love the smells of ham and beans and carmel corn in great cast iron kettles. My own long, antique dress is covered with straw from the bales I sit on waiting for my show to start and watching the other performers. Music is abundant....banjos, dulcimers, penny whistles, Celtic harps, guitars, mandolins. Songs are the familiar..Stephen Foster...I'll Fly Away...Shenendoah. I sit and listen and am lost in the fluidity of the festival.
Tens of thousands of folks....babies and toddlers with carmel apples dripping off their chins..older folks with hot apple dumplings....sassafras from antique bottles.

Another wonderful festival. Another year. My baby's first year. Jonah turned one on Friday. His first cake. By the time he was finished with his cake, the entire dining room was covered with icing! My life has been changed by this dark-eyed, red headed darling boy who knows me as Nannie.

The heart of this September brings continued storytelling...the work that I love so passionately. It also brings Philip to Indiana. He fared well during the Hurricane this week...lots of clean up, but no major problems. He will join me here in Indiana to watch the leaves begin their pilgrimage from jade and forest green to russet and scarlet and to catch up on some much needed rest.
I will be happy to see him again and to share my life here with him.

This week we celebrate the Autumnal Equinox...the turning of earth towards the dark days of winter...time to light the fires, put the kettle on for tea, draw the drapes for the coming darkness. But for tonight, the moon is full...a ribbon of light to light our way taking us home to family and those we love.

Until next week, light a candle or a sparkler for the Equinox (Philip and I will be sharing sparklers in the back yard!), gather the last of the fruits of the gardens and put the kettle on for tea.

Lou Ann