when there is great comfort in ordinary things

reflections on October days, soups, sickness, and birds.

I looked out my window last week and noticed the birds.

One downy woodpecker, a couple of pretty birds with blue on their wings, and some common sparrows. I hadn’t seen many birds out my kitchen window in a while and I loved the way they flew in like they were late for a party.

The backyard maple trees hosted them as they chatted and flitted about, and I watched from inside, washing the lunch dishes. Had my oldest child been around, I would have called him over to see the birds so he could identify them for me. He would have known right away or would have run over to one of his many bird guides.

Those two blue birds…what were they? I grabbed my phone; my hands still dripping from dishwater and snapped a photo for reference later.

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Yesterday, during a regular homeschool morning I was reading a few pages out of “Nature Hikes,” a charming children’s book from the 60’s. My son had pulled it out of the craft closet thinking it was a coloring book and I was not disappointed with the mistake. This is one of those gems that comes out of a grandmother’s basement, and that’s exactly where we got it.

“Look!” He pointed to a picture of an animal. “That’s what we saw under the big pile of posts, remember?!”

“Oh! It says it’s a ground squirrel. That’s what you saw that day? The animal with the big jump?”

I tried not to laugh as I recalled the day that my 5-year-old ran inside to tell me about the animal with spots and stripes that ran out from underneath the pile of fence posts, scaring the boys as it ran close to them and apparently jumped very high.

When I went outside to look, of course it wasn’t there anymore. We had “asked Google” and came up with nothing. The boys had hoped it would be an armadillo, but I assured them we don’t have any around here. They were certain it was something very unusual for our area, but it turns out it was just a ground squirrel.

After reading a few more pages we made another discovery, only this time it was mine. “That’s the blue bird I saw the other day! It’s called… a Bluebird.”

Now I’m feeling like I really should have known that. I was raised by avid birders so there’s no excuse for me.

leaves, leaves, and more leaves

When we weren’t attempting to identify animals outside this month, we were sick. Fevers, sore throats, rashes, I’m not going to go on. It’s just that time of year. In between bouts of sickness, I made sure to always keep some kind of soup on hand, the two favorites this month being Creamy White Bean, and Chicken Soup.

My sister-in-law’s family was here to help us work on our house-build, and I cooked an enormous pot of Chicken Dumpling Soup in my new 16-quart stockpot. I’ve since decided that chicken soup always needs to be made in huge quantities. The dumplings were all eaten by the end of supper, but the rest of the soup with its homemade broth and little bits of carrots, onion, celery, and chicken was more delicious than ever in the following days.

That one batch of soup was a gift to me when I had mastitis last weekend and all I wanted to eat was sourdough bread and chicken broth as I attempted to rest, feverish and sore.

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Last night as I wrote this, it was the windiest 80-degree October day and it ended with a sky filled with cotton-candy-like orange and blue clouds. The ground everywhere to my right was blanketed in orange and brown leaves that blew from the south winds all day, blending with the burnt-orange chickens that ran out to greet me, hoping for compost treats.

Tomorrow the high will be only 42 degrees. This is October in Iowa.

At the beginning of this month, I sighed deeply and said to my sister, “There aren’t enough weekends in October.”

But after a two-week virus, two weddings, and then mastitis all of last weekend, I’ve changed my tune. There are just enough days and weekends in October.

There were just enough days for backyard birds, a new sunset each evening, and a lot of ordinary shades of brown and ordinary things. There were pots of homemade soup, buckets of apples, sweet visits with family, and there was that one head of cabbage that lasted all month in the back of my fridge, there for me just when I needed it most.

Catherine Pfenning

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What have you been cooking this month? What is getting you through the shorter, blustery days of fall? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.