Fall has colored my days especially well this year, but they tell me that winter is on its way. Seattle maples held fast to their leaves until a couple of wind storms, and now a drenching rain blasts the color onto lawns awaiting my rake. The last of the summer veggies on my window sill, like me, prefer to be inside. The winter Delicata squash I dragged home on a trip through Eastern Washington are a dinner vegetable staple twice a week. More pears and apples than cereal grace my breakfast bowl. But as a child in Oakland, California, I best remember fall for the figs and persimmons. The last fruits harvested prefer a long, warm summer. So do I. I have that in common with figs and persimmons. Even now, the small display of orange and purple at my local grocery store turns my head. But $7 for a basket of figs? And only Fuyu persimmons - the hard, crispy kind. Where are the Hachiyas I'm used to? The kind that feel like a sack of mush before you can eat them. California persi
I began this blog when my mother was ill and needed enough of my attention that I could not concentrate on longer-form works I wanted to write. I set those aside to distract myself with cookie-making and this blog. Please find my new blog (2020) entitled "Time NOT Lost" at karenbrattesani.blogspot.com, where I explore the behavior I see around me -- both my own and that of others -- and what it says about our changing culture during the coronavirus pandemic. And, I hope, beyond.