Colleen’s Weekly Poetry Challenge Fright & Night

With consternation

Children step up to the door

Shouting “Trick or Treat”

Are the decorations fake

In the dim light, they aren’t sure

©2017 Annette Rochelle Aben

Colleen’s 5 Week Poetry Challenge

Writers Quote Wednesday Autumn

Autumn… ah, I am totally in love with autumn!  Why not, I am, after all, an autumn baby. Then there’s Halloween (always meant candy to me) and Thanksgiving (set down the pumpkin pie and back away slowly), so what’s not to love! Growing up here, in Michigan (the 26^th State of the Union in the United States of America) we experience the changing of four seasons. Albeit, some parts of my great state have rather short seasonal durations…  Up north, where my folks live, we joke that they have two seasons, August and winter. We have the cider mills scattered like autumn leaves, everywhere and that means, fresh donuts, crunchy apples and jugs of amazing amber liquid that goes down like sweet silk. Naturally, because we experience the seasonal changes, we also have the riot of the warm color spectrum nearly everywhere you look. Believe it or not, you can book travel tours of Michigan just to view the colors and people DO cruise every back road to enjoy the experience.

Everything from the cooler temperatures to the crunching of the leaves under foot, puts a smile on my face. There’s something remarkable about watching the trees go from hosting lush greenery to sporting botanical flame, in every possible shade (and often on the same tree). It boggles the mind how they know precisely when to turn and in the blink of an eye, a good gust of wind can come along and bye-bye color, hello stark branches. In a way, it’s like watching a magic trick that’s being performed by hundreds of magicians one right after another. Each one achieves the same result but they have their own personal way of making it happen.

We used to have bonfires, where the leaves were burned, along with fallen branches and that meant a party. You’d wrap up in your warmest flannel and sturdier jeans to hang around the crackling flames with family and friends. There was plenty of music, good food and for those “of age” a nip of alcohol to warm you up from the inside out. Hay rides carried you through pumpkin patches. If you were lucky, there was a moon to watch following you, all the while pretending that it wasn’t watching you watching.

Putting the summer outdoor furniture away meant the decorations of Indian corn, mums and pumpkins had room to spread. The celebrations just seemed to morph from one into the other until we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of winter. The ritual of exchanging the golden warmth of autumn for the blue chill of winter was a time honored tradition that seemed to be part of our DNA.

Nature’s beauty comes in all forms and to each his own. My own is and shall ever be autumn, in all her glory.

Blazing colors dance

Swirling in the playful wind

Laughing as they move

Autumn calls us out

Kisses our cheeks in crimson

Stores warmth in our hearts

©2016 Annette Rochelle Aben

 I have to share one of my favorite songs…  Enjoy

https://youtu.be/hsCdlX-5UjE

https://silverthreading.com/2016/09/07/wqwwc-writers-quote-wednesday-writing-challenge-autumn/

A Treat to Celebrate National Read a Book Day – A Cover Reveal

Why didn’t the skeleton like the Jack-O’ Lantern? No bones about it! 

Yeah, well that’s what you get for allowing me to write Halloween jokes, okay!! I’d like to think my haiku is a bit better. I’ll just bet that if I combined haiku and Halloween, I’d stand a chance of hearing some screams.

of laughter, of course, or maybe a ghoulish grin or two? 

In honor of National Read a Book Day, I present for your approval… the COVER REVEAL of my next book!

Thank  you to Chris Graham for the amazing 3D version of my cover!  If you contact him, perhaps he can scare something up for your books…  http://www.thestoryreadingapeblog.com

This is a “Halloween story in words and pictures” of how the “creatures of the fright” occupy their time leading up to their big night. Naturally, when the pressure is on, they do a ‘fang-up’ job of tricking the little beggars into believing that their bark is worse than their bite.

Each year, the “Mistress of Halloween” (they say, she’s a dead ringer for my sister, Lorraine) proves herself worthy of the title of Diva of Decorating and transforms our front yard into sea of spooky. The little ones have been to known to stop smack in their tracks when greeted by snakes slithering on their path but it’s the life size rubber rats, with gnarly fangs that really give them pause. You would think with the disembodied heads hanging around, they wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance of getting near the candy but we run out every year. Of candy, not kids…

Watch for the forthcoming announcement of BooKu, Halloween haiku coming to life soon on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats.

http://www.amazon.com/author/annetterochelleaben

festivitrees

Lights can make trees shine

Adding colors to green boughs

By leaving their glow

©2015 Annette Rochelle Aben

Christmas Trees Around the World

Thank you to Colleen for the invite to participate in this photo gallery.

My sister, Lorraine, is the tree decorator in this house. She has such a grand time so my brother, Mitch and I simply stay out of her way, lest we end up decorated ourselves.

Lorraine not only decorates the tree, she decorates everything (pretty much) in the room. Yes, those are Santa and elf hats on skulls…  Dinosaur? But of course!

 

We are located in  Westland which is in the great State of Michigan, smack dab in between Detroit Metro Airport, Ann Arbor, Detroit and Dearborn (roughly 25 minutes from any one those destinations for those who are Michigan savvy).

Many of the decorations have been in our family for decades and believe it or not, she adds new things every year…  No wonder she loves decorating even the outside trees as well as creating trees out of practically ANYTHING in the house!

 

http://silverthreading.com/2015/12/06/christmas-trees-around-the-world