FALL ... beautiful Fall . . .

Happy 1st Day of Autumn!

Growing up in Western Pennsylvania and living in N.E. Ohio for the past several years, I have always enjoyed the changing of the seasons!  

 

Winter can be so pretty as you sit inside your warm, cozy home and watch the snow gently falling to cover everything with a clean blanket of white!

Spring is a breath of fresh air ... a time when you can open the windows, enjoy the breeze and witness your yard go from dingy winter brown to beautiful springtime green!

Summer is always wonderful with the warm, sunny days and flowers all a bloom.

But FALL can be the best of all!  

With the cooler temperatures, wonderful fresh garden vegetables and the amazing colors of the trees, how could you ask for more!

It was brought to my attention recently of a challenge blog called OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD.  Wow! What an awesome site with beautiful photos and stories being shared.  This week's challenge is FALL and I instantly knew what photo I wanted to share.

 This is a maple tree in my daughter's front yard in Leetonia, Ohio.  

I took this photo back in 2005 but every year it looks JUST LIKE THIS ... just gorgeous. 

 I grew up on 25 acres ... covered with Oak, Maple & Dogwood trees.

 

In fact, my parents had to cut down enough trees to make a clearing to build our house.  They took them to a local saw mill where they were cut into boards that were then used to build the house! 

In case you are not familiar ... the red leaf in the photo is a Maple leaf in its fall color. The green leaf is an Oak and the photo below with the red berries is a Dogwood.

See that 'saw blade' peeking out from behind this dogwood branch.  Well THAT SCARY THING is the actual saw that my parents used to cut the logs that we burned in our wood fired furnace when I was a kid.  Summer time my dad spent hours in the woods cutting & clearing then come fall he would hook up this MONSTROSITY to our tractor that had a pullie belt & motor that created the power to make the blade go around fast enough to cut the logs into burnable size pieces.  Then we kids (3 girls) would help haul it back up to the house and stack it in the basement to get us through the winter.

My father has been passed for 20+ years now and the old saw still sits down in  what was our 'picnic area' and there was even a few years that Mom planted flowers around it in honor of my Dad.  Talk about hard work ... and yikes ... we're lucky no one ever got hurt with this thing!!  Nope ... there was no GUARD ... that saw blade was spinning fast & free and the platform table on the back is on wheels and that's where you laid the logs to pushed them into the saw blade to be cut.

Well ... I didn't mean to go on and on, but thanks for letting me share one of my Fall childhood memories with you today!  

God has certainly blessed us with so many wonderful & beautiful things!  Even this scary old saw blade which enabled my parents to keep our family warm through the cold, harsh winter months.

Enjoy the remainder of your weekend!

As always ...