A Cozy Creative Life

I love fall. I really do. I love the cooler days, changing leaves and all the wonderful textures of the season. I just don’t happen to love orange.

Maybe that’s why I’m always drawn to the other colors of fall—the soft greens, creamy whites, faded pinks and deep, rich shades that seem to appear everywhere this time of year.

There is one exception. I love the orange of bittersweet, especially mixed with all the other colors and textures of fall.

For me, fall is just as much about what I find outdoors—buckeyes, acorns, changing leaves and dried hydrangeas—as it is about pumpkins.

Bittersweet is another story. I love finding it so much that I keep garden clippers in my car at this time of year, just in case.

One year, on a back road between garden centers, I spotted enormous bunches of bittersweet hanging from the trees. Some of the berries were still yellow, but I knew immediately what I was looking at.

I pulled off the road a little farther down, grabbed my clippers and hurried back. The vines were a tangled mess, but that didn’t bother me. I think those curly, twisting stems make bittersweet even more beautiful.

I cut more than I needed, loaded it into the car and drove home feeling very pleased with my discovery. I had found my own secret bittersweet spot.

When I got home, I spread the vines out on the grass in the sunshine. As the berries ripen, their yellow coverings pop open to reveal the bright orange berries inside.

A few days later, I went outside to get some of the bittersweet for decorating.

It was gone.

All of it.

I couldn’t imagine what had happened to it. A bird might eat the berries, but it certainly wouldn’t carry away that enormous pile of vines. And I couldn’t imagine someone walking by and taking the whole thing.

The following week, the gentleman who mows my lawn was here. I always go outside and talk with him while he works, so I decided to ask if he remembered seeing anything lying in the grass the week before.

“Do you mean the pile of weeds?” he asked.

Yes—that was exactly what I meant. Except, of course, they weren’t weeds. They were my beautiful bittersweet vines.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought that was trash and I threw it away for you.”

He had thought he was doing me a favor. He apologized, and I did too. After all, I was the one who had left what looked like a giant pile of weeds lying in the middle of the lawn.

Luckily, I had already separated out some of the ripe vines, so I hadn’t lost everything. We both had a good laugh about it.

I learned my lesson. Now, when I find bittersweet, I put it on the patio—preferably on a table where no one could possibly mistake it for yard waste.

Maybe that’s part of what I love about this time of year. Fall gives me a reason to go looking—for buckeyes, bittersweet, changing leaves and all the little signs that one season is beginning to give way to another.

But I’m not quite ready to rush summer out the door. There are still flowers blooming, warm afternoons to enjoy and plenty happening in the garden.

September lets me have a little of both. I can bring home a pumpkin, gather a few buckeyes and start watching for bittersweet without giving up the last beautiful days of summer.

I don’t have to choose between summer and fall just yet. For a little while, I can enjoy them both.