# Autumn



## GDPR

Happy first day of Fall


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## making_art

Happy Fall...one of my fav seasons!


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## GDPR

It's always been my least favorite season because it has always been so triggering,but I am just trying to embrace it and enjoy it this year.


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## making_art

LIT said:


> It's always been my least favorite season because it has always been so triggering,but I am just trying to embrace it and enjoy it this year.



Sorry, that your triggers are related to the Fall....if only it was as simple as me wishing you some great Fall feelings or sharing some of mine with you....

Good for trying the embracement if Fall...Im thinking you should gain something for your efforts...

What if you started a new to you tradition....


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## GDPR

I am going to try to participate in all the Fall festivities this year instead of avoiding them and trying to run from them.I think doing them with people I truly care about will make a difference.

I am actually excited about it,and have plans for the weekend already.

And I am excited about all the different pumpkin flavor foods...pumpkin pie,pumpkin shakes and flurries,pumpkin bread,cookies,coffee.....:love_heart:


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## making_art

Oh no pumpkin goodies....and I'm trying to lose a few pounds.....I'll just have a small piece of pumpkin pie without the whipped cream![emoji83][emoji316][emoji513]


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## MHealthJo

Pumpkin is so yummy. When I hear how many interesting edible goodies happen with holidays and seasons that are not a big deal over here, I get jealous. [emoji3]


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## making_art

Starbucks caramel apple spice...apple cider, whipped cream, caramel drizzle......oh my its good on a Fall evening[emoji449][emoji260]


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## GDPR

Pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting....yum

---------- Post Merged on September 24th, 2016 at 09:17 AM ---------- Previous Post was on September 23rd, 2016 at 11:43 PM ----------



making_art said:


> Starbucks caramel apple spice...apple cider, whipped cream, caramel drizzle......oh my its good on a Fall evening[emoji449][emoji260]



That sounds so good!!


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## making_art




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## rdw

We eat pumpkin as a vegetable - cook it and mash it with a little butter and salt and pepper. One of our absolute favourites and really good for you too.
I love autumn as I love the colours and the smells. We love to watch the birds migrating south and the changeover of birds in our yard from summer birds to the ones who stay all winter.


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## MHealthJo

Okay, I guess I've never seen a field of orange pumpkins before, and it's a beautiful thing.😍


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## making_art

MHJo.....do you have a Fall season and if so what is it like?


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## MHealthJo

Well, we call it Autumn over here, and I'm guessing if I was really in rural outback place where nobody had bothered attempting to grow foreign deciduous trees, maybe I really may not have in real life seen the beautiful changing colours and the "fall" of the leaves.... My knowledge is not exact about whether Australia does have some native deciduous plants in some places, but I'm pretty sure over in the West here no native plants are deciduous...... (?)

But because there are plenty of them planted in my mediterranean-climate city and many will do OK as long as you take care of them in the dry summer while they establish, that part is certainly not unknown to me. I think though that we don't get as much range of all the different beautiful colours - things like maples and various others aren't tolerant of our scorching long dry summer. And for street plantings by the government, a small range of hardy reliable species get favored. So to see a bigger and prettier range of deciduous trees you'll look in people's yards, pretty plant nurseries and some parks, older towns/old suburbs, maybe orchards, etc. 

Yeah, the more spectacular ones tend not to be bulk-planted. I certainly would love at some stage to head to the northern hemisphere to see those incredible displays of how they look en masse, in nature and stuff. 

What happens where I live, in autumn, is basically this: a collective worn-out, exhausted sigh of relief among us of, "Oh, thank GOD!! I think the summer heat is starting to ease off!!" 

(Even the whole first month of autumn is horrific. The second month, April, we get relief. And I also go around with a dirty look on a couple of April days that will still be bad. Picture me a couple of times a year screaming into the cosmos in outrage: "FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!!!! IT'S APRIL!!!!!!!"

 Okay. So then we start kind of ''recovering' and just noticing that we can venture outdoors in the daytime and not be suffering and incapacitated. So you think of things you can finally get done and stuff. People often camp or holiday at Easter or do DIY projects, do their yard and garden work.

You get a bit of a stretch of that, and then you just kind of adjust to the "3/4 beautiful, 1/4 rainy" weather that is nonsummer. April to November basically. (November also has that same Occasional April Heat Outrage phenomenon.) 

Then back to December -> March for Another Summer of Hell. 😂 

Nah, people do their evening barbecues and parties and they enjoy it. It just exhausts me though. 

I enjoy autumn because it's Not Summer. 😆


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## GDPR

I got so sidetracked by thinking about pumpkin foods that I forgot about all the pretty colors of Fall.The leaves are just now starting to change colors here,and I can't wait for them to look like this...


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## making_art

Lit those photos are inspiring. My fav are birch trees in the Fall with there white bark.
MHJo... Thanks for the great description The seasons in Australia. I could never tolerate that kind of heat!...The benefit of living on the Northern Pacific coast is the cool breeze always cones off the ocean on the days we reach 28-30 degrees celsius.


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## MHealthJo

30 degrees celsius! How *do* you cope! 😆😆

Hahaha, kidding aside, I do wonder how I would be in a genuine northern hemisphere winter..... maybe my body doesn't know the true meaning temperature discomfort....... 😉


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## making_art

Hahaha.....I don't cope...I melt!   We have cherry blossoms blooming on the trees in February. We have rainy winters with some frost but rarely snow. We also have many people here from Australia.


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## MHealthJo

On the 30 degree days in summer we dance around in gratitude about getting some mild days.   :woohoo:

Sounds like a lovely place Making Art! 

Yeah, I do love hearing about all the various things that happen differently in places far away.....

Actually I should post a pic of some of the unusual plants and things..... A nice incentive to get out and about and take some photos....



---------- Post Merged at 01:28 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 01:03 PM ----------

Okay I just looked at that picture of the pumpkin field again. So here's what happens at some point when you go to the supermarket with your mum when you're a little kid in this city.

From all the media we get that originates from North America, and perhaps other places too, and exposure to a mild version of Halloween, you'll expect pumpkins to look like this. 



But what we actually see in the store are two varieties we get here, which look like this,



and this. 



Thus begins the gathering of knowledge of what's different in other places.... starting from that childhood moment of Pumpkin Confusion.


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## making_art

Hahaha....pumpkin confusion.....good idea about walking around taking photos


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## Retired

Not much in the way of color change in foliage around Ottawa this year.  With warmer temps and dry ground, leaves may just go from green to dropped this year.

Steve


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## GDPR

This is what my trees look like right now.They are not as colorful as they will be soon,but still,they're very pretty I think.



---------- Post Merged at 11:34 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:20 AM ----------


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## MHealthJo

Very pretty....


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## forgetmenot

Autumn leaves here are, so beautiful every color yellows reds oranges  all dressed up the trees are this year  best year so far since i moved here


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## making_art

Here along the road through the park many people bring their Halloween pumpkins and place them on the logs!


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## GDPR

making_art said:


> Here along the road through the park many people bring their Halloween pumpkins and place them on the logs!



Is there a story,tradition or purpose for doing that? Are they just left there?Do people vandalize them?If that was done where I live,within hours they would all be smashed by teenagers.


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## making_art

LIT said:


> Is there a story,tradition or purpose for doing that? Are they just left there?Do people vandalize them?If that was done where I live,within hours they would all be smashed by teenagers.



No story that I know of. People just take their pumpkins here after Halloween and just leave them. It is in the university area. 

They are eaten by deer and other wildlife but mainly just fall apart and decompose. It is a forest area that you drive or bike too so I think that takes care of accessibility by kids walking around.

Not sure if the parks people do any clean up at some point.


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## MHealthJo

I guess the deer and wildlife even get a festive period in this location then! Nom nom. I wonder if they wonder why all these orange snacks start appearing all of a sudden. 😆

Well, in my location it's not time for autumn foliage, but I'm seeing some in a nature-themed MMO game I play (the world there follows the northern hemisphere's seasons/events). Made of pixels but still pretty! [emoji14]


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## GDPR

Completely off topic MHJ,but I had to Google MMO to see what it meant.I am not a gamer,so had no clue.

*no idea why I felt the need to say that*


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## MHealthJo

You're right, there are so many terms in our world now relating to so many different little pockets of culture, technology, etc. I'd be utterly lost without someone who helps me work out a lot of tech stuff, and then I wonder what happens to anyone who doesn't have one of those people around...


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## GDPR

One of my kids is a hardcore gamer.I have just never really been interested in it.They seem way too complicated for me,I am old school and miss games like pac man and..I even miss the old atari games.

No,I am not really old school,I'm just old.I used to go to the arcade and play Donkey Kong back in the day...


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## making_art

I play scrabble on my phone and I'm attempting Pokemon go but still need to figure out how to catch one[emoji849] i have read that you can get Pikachu when you start but the other issue is not wanting to use my data . So I'm waiting till i go downtown for the free wifi and i can then walk a distance to get him


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## GDPR

Things have really changed from back in the day.I remember when pong was actually fun to play.And there was a game called Duck Hunt I used to love playing.Even a toddler would find those games boring and easy nowadays.

I have tried my sons Samsung Gear VR a few times.Virtual reality is the most amazing thing to me and I could probably really get into gaming if I owned it.


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## MHealthJo

I must sadly admit that the more time marches on (and depending what else my brain is dealing with)  the more I have no hope of any of the ones that are in any way complicated or that require coordinating much button pressing. Can't remotely deal with 98% of what's out there, much less master it.

My MMO game Animal Jam requires just mouseclicking on the game world or on big menu buttons, and a bit of arrow buttons (optional), and is technically aimed at children and full of tutorials aimed at the young'uns. Perfect. 😆

(And I'm a generation that was taught computers all through school and played consoles at home!! Sigh... )

Well, back on the autumn topic, this is the Animal Jam world in autumn time. 




This is just a picture off the internet. But if I'm feeling reeeeeeally energetic later, I just may take some screenshots when I've decorated my animal's house with some pretty autumn items. 😆


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## GDPR

That's not at all the type of game I imagined,I assumed you played the ones like my son does.

Looks like fun actually.


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## MHealthJo

Hee hee... it may be aimed at kids, but there seems to be a whole section of people who 'grew up' playing it and liked it too much to give up... wanting to keep seeing what new features and items keep coming in, etc etc... 

...and the ones like me, mums or dads or aunties or whoever started playing it with a kiddie, and then went "Uh oh. I think I'm hooked... and let's face it, it's not that bad a thing to get hooked on." 😆 Besides, it's connected with NatGeo, it's educational and I think you can donate your 'gems' in the game to convert to money for conservation/nature causes and blah blah. What's not to like. Lol

(plus there's an optional 'trade items' feature which causes a whole exciting investment/stock market/economy type thing - deciding what items to let go of, and what items might become highly coveted and valuable if you hold onto them a while to trade them later. Oh man don't get me started. Adventures in Barter.😆)


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## rdw

Does solitaire or sudoku count ? :lol:


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## making_art

rdw said:


> Does solitaire or sudoku count ? :lol:



They are games!


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## MHealthJo

It's all awesome. The joy of solitaire, sudoku, scrabble, candy crush, etc, is the accessibility level - just more well known. More likely to be auto-installed on your phone or tablet or something, more likely to not have to learn anything too new, and so just handy and easy to get into.

And you know what - there are definitely people/groups who are just as super hardcore geeky about those games and stuff like that... I should really watch some championship level matches of strategy board games or something sometime, that would probably be fun. ☺


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