Deflated Pumpkin and the Orange is Gone Gone Gone

Being mindful has become a most excellent activity!  Because I'm writing these observations down, I find I'm always on the lookout for wondrous things......beautiful, interesting funny, ironic.  I list many many a day. Way more than I'd imagined.  WAY more.

I try to choose the best three for the week; it's hard to pick.

I've been contemplating the color "Orange" this past week.  Orange is a really quirky color.  Solid and substantial.  Nothing delicate about Orange.  A spunky color.  People rarely wear orange, though.  It's too weird, too offbeat in it's brighter shades. 

You really only see orange in autumn, unless maybe a few zinnias in the summer.  But Orange IS the color of fall....leaves, chrysanthemums and of course, pumpkins.  Wonderfully, solidly Orange.  Rounded and full, pumpkins are Orange in it's inflated and expanded form.

I put 6 little pumpkins....one for each member of our family..... on the window sill every autumn while decorating.  I love seeing them there, a cheerful greeting as I'm struggling to bring groceries in through the back door.

Lately, though, they've been out of place....a color in the wrong time.  This cold season is the color of evergreens and brown and white.  Muted and stark.  Orange is too lively for this time of year.

After the recent brutal cold spell and then later thawing, the little pumpkins have gone soft.  Time for the compost bin.  Gone, Orange is gone, gone, gone til next fall.  Winter is here.  

I stopped by a friend's house the other day and saw this deflated pumpkin.  It was as if this pumpkin were a friend of the Wicked Witch of the West!  The insides had completely melted away into the ground below leaving only the outside skin folded into a slump.  I wondered if this pumpkin was real.  Had to touch it.  It was definitely real!  And rather ridiculous, really.  Insides dissolved, fullness vanished, only the rumpled skin was left behind.  Orange on it's way out.   

Other observations:

****The vibrations of the trains below pulsing through the wooden benches at the 30th Street Station in Philly.  Massive, heavy, rumbling sensations traveling from the tracks up through the benches into my body.  Power transferred.

****The smoothness of a little hill of ice outside the gate of Rosie's yard.  Ice can be so treacherous, but honestly, the feel of this mound of packed snow under the ball of my foot is positively sensuous!  Slick, smooth, massaging the underside of my foot.  Ooh la la, who would've ever thought!  (Is this crazy?)