11/27/2024
Happy Thanksgiving!!
This is my new art for Autumn/Thanksgiving this year, a still life of heirloom pumpkins. And if you know me, you know I love pumpkins of every size, shape and color. 🙂
Counting my blessings…
I am thankful for little ones’ tiny fingers who hold mine as we walk down the wooded paths, their enthusiasm and wonder renews my own.
For sunny afternoons at my childhood home, it appears to have changed so little yet I see my parents have grown old. I sometimes wish I could see the aging house and gardens for what they are and my dad and mom could stay forever the pillars of strength and continuity that I have known from birth but age does come to house and humans and I love them both all the more fiercely because of it.
I am thankful for the rivers that flow, for the breezes that blow, and that this year I saw so many butterflies, far more than in the past few years, I appreciated each and every one.
And that we live close enough to Vermont so we can spend hours driving the back roads and I can see the beauty of landscape, the farms, the hills and valleys, around every twist and turn in the road the beauty never ceases, rugged and obscure it may be yet it fills me with a longing and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.
I am thankful for beautiful nieces who love and trust me enough to share a part of their lives with me, even the broken and hurting bits.
And that I live an age when vehicles have good sound systems and I can listen to an endless playlist of Dwight Yoakam as loud as I want and he never grows old.
I am thankful for every sunny day and the rain when it comes, for every rainbow that graced the heavens, and the warmth of golden Autumn afternoons.
And for almost 22 years of being Ian’s mom and 27 years of being Justin’s wife. I am thankful that 10 years ago Miss Doll came to live at my house and I found my first love in all the animal world. And now between her and Little One I have become, without remorse or hesitation, a feline slave.
I am thankful that I have seen Virginia Creeper grow up the old Pine tree’s trunk, covering it with deep green leaves that turned crimson in Autumn, that I have felt the spray of salt water on my face as we walked along the rocky coastline in the late Winter sunshine, that I have smelled the spicy sweet fragrance of rambling wild roses in June, that I have tasted the tart sweetness of this year's apple crop, and that I have heard the songbirds’ morning anthem to the Spring.
I am thankful to have stood in the dark and watched the northern lights dance across the edge of the sky, eerie and beautiful they filled my world with mystery and wonder.
All this plus ten thousand more moments to be grateful for.
Wishing you a very blessed, peaceful and grateful Thanksgiving,
Jen at A Vintage Wren
