Brown

Yesterday, when I walked into the house after church, I thought of a favorite book from childhood called Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Color, poetically going through every color and what one might associate with it.

I thought about brown.

"Brown is the color of a country road

Back of a turtle

Back of a toad.

Brown is cinnamon

And morning toast

And the good smell of

the Sunday roast.

Brown is the color of work

And the sound of a river,

Brown is bronze and a bow

And a quiver.

Brown is the house 

On the edge of town

Where wind is tearing

The shingles down.

Brown is a freckle

Brown is a mole

Brown is the earth

When you dig a hole.

Brown is the hair 

On many a head

Brown is chocolate

And gingerbread.

Brown is a feeling

You get inside

When wondering makes 

Your mind grow wide.

Brown is a leather shoe

And a good glove---

Brown is as comfortable

As love."

As I came in the back door, the air was rich with the smell of roast and onions that I'd thrown in the crockpot earlier that morning.

We read on the couch in the afternoon, the boys put together a gingerbread house and Christmas tree, sets they'd gotten as gifts last December (yes, I know), while the girls watched and I peeled potatoes and we had an old conference talk by President Monson going in the background about gratitude (something I mentally took note of to come back to with the children in November when we make our gratitude tree).  

I've always loved light streaming in through windows.  

It's something I frequently notice, a free gift of love I feel every single day.

Later on, we ate that roast for dinner, with mashed potatoes and scratch gravy and a salad and carrots and beets and onions.

We took a walk in the neighborhood, 

came home and read together in my room, and then I was up late visiting with friends, cleaning up my kitchen, making pumpkin spice muffins for the kiddos for breakfast.

Brown is something else at my house, too.  

She's taken residence on my mantle, with her sister colors of 

copper, rust, gold and amber. 

I like having sentinel owls in the living room, nuts and ginko leaves and gourds, symbolic of harvest and color, and the little glass pumpkin my dad brought me from Cape Cod several years ago.

Wishing you all a lovely Labor Day, folks.

xoxo