Oh pioneers!

Okay, click here and read this wonderful recipe. It's for rosemary rolls in an iron skillet using frozen rolls. I love rosemary (it's like eating pine needles), and with our warm fall on Cape Cod this year, the big rosemary plant I dragged into the breezeway is still hanging on. I don't know the Pioneer Woman (yet), but her web site has loads of great recipes, and she's in the midst of a book tour for her new book "Pioneer Woman Cooks." Can't wait to read it!

What wins my heart, though, is the point in the rolls recipe where she says, "I'm not stopping there. I never stop there. Stopping there is my least favorite thing to do in life..." Words to live by, Pioneer Woman -- even here on Cape Cod!

Dew, I love you? Dew I; Oh, my. Dewey, deed I do!

I'm at my happiest in a library, and one of the best parts of living on Cape Cod is our access to the outstanding CLAMS system, which links libraries all over the Cape. So thanks to the Writer's Almanac for the notice that today is the birthdate of Melvil Dewey, the man who developed the Dewey Decimal System -- where would bibliophiles be without him?  Happy Birthday to the man who said, "My heart is open to anything that's either decimal or about libraries."

The dear little Cotuit Library.

It's snowing! It's snowing!

Yes, finally. It's snowing on Cape Cod, and burying all the roses that have kept blooming right through December. Snow!

I love the snow song in "White Christmas," don't you? Listen to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yQ2xqCE2E8

Standing firm against the Christmas Tide

Unless we make Christmas 

an occasion to share our blessings, 

all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white'." 

-- Bing Crosby

I hope the fact that I'm standing firm that doesn't make me sound Scroogey. Far from it -- this year, I'm very excited about Christmas. And I can't wait to put up Mr. and Mrs. Saint Nicholas, not to mention Chef Santa. That's him below -- at $5.00, he was another Tresori Tuesday candidate -- and his red, white and black apparel fits in perfectly with my  red and black kitchen.

So, despite the fact that I'm looking forward to Christmas, I want to take this Thanksgiving weekend, and let it be Thanksgiving. It seems that everyone who has decorations up at this time of year gets tired of them before New Year arrives, and I just want to treasure the thankful time for what it is. My goal is to take down all the fall decorations by Sunday, and then I'll get my loot of Yuletime treasures out in the weeks to come.

I also want to say that I've decided that fall decorations are probably the best seasonal decorating investment. I had mine up in early September (primarily because I was so sick of the muggy August weather), and, with a little subsidiary dip into and then out of Halloween-themed items, I've had pumpkins and leaves and acorns and turkeys out through this week. That's almost three full months of autumnal accessories! My favorite acquisitions this year were the half price white pumpkin on my dining table, which I snatched in the after-Halloween sale, and the fabulous and very realistic fall garlands that I found everywhere from A.C. Moore to Christmas Tree Shops. I've got three new Rubbermaid containers to pack everything up, so I'll post this as a dare to myself. Let's see what happens by Sunday night! Because, after all:

It is Christmas in the heart 

that puts Christmas in the air."
~ W. T. Ellis

In our gratitude

.

Though he was ill and in pain,
in disobedience to the instruction he
would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed,
dressed, and went to the barn.
The bare branches of winter had emerged
through the last leaf-colors of fall,
the loveliest of all, browns and yellows
delicate and nameless in the gray light
and the sifting rain. He put feed
in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs,
sent the dog for them, and she
brought them. They came eager
to their feed, and he who felt
their hunger was by their feeding
eased. From no place in the time
of present places, within no boundary
nameable in human thought,
they had gathered once again,
the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog
with all the known and the unknown
round about to the heavens' limit.
Was this his stubbornness or bravado?
No. Only an ordinary act
of profoundest intimacy in a day
that might have been better. Still
the world persisted in its beauty,
he in his gratitude, and for this
he had most earnestly prayed.

"XI." by Wendell Berry, from Leavings