On the calendar

Bea & Belle's September

We (Bea and I) are summer people. We like swimming, rafting, boats, ice cream, cicadasong, and not going to school.

But alas, we are both back to school and headed into fall—which has its charms. Like “club fit” (a new before-school play time at Bea’s school), making new friends, and getting ready for Halloween (Bea got the idea for her costume back in June!). Eventually there will be a crispness to the air, beautiful fall sunsets, and jeans-instead-of-shorts. We’ll have fires in the fire pit, s’mores, owl calls, and cozy reading time.

A pre-fall back-to-school activity we tried this weekend was making our own fridge or wall calendars. We patterned ours after Martha Stewart’s calendar, which lists a single activity (like “yoga” or “call Snoop”) on just about every day of the month. There are, of course, actual holidays in September, like Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah. But we confined our calendar mostly to made-up holidays, and focused on thinking of fun and silly ideas that would help us look forward to September.

Mamie made a calendar too. Hers was about savoring the last days of summer (see the tiny kayaker?).

I like this activity because you have to plan a grid, think about the days of the week, and work with numbers and handwriting (if you look closely, Mamie made a mistake with one of her numbers, which she cleverly fixed). We used watercolor paper, drawing pencils, and our Gansai Tambi watercolors.

Some other (official) events you might want to take note of in September:

September 12: Grandparents’ day (send a card or FaceTime them!)

September 20: Full moon (the corn moon!)

September 22: Autumn begins

And don’t forget September 16, National Pawpaw Day!

Here are some figs and pawpaws we picked this weekend:

How about you—what’s your favorite season, and your favorite thing about this time of year? Have you tried a pawpaw yet?