Seasonal Fun: Autumn

Garden:

Harvest your bounty and dry some seeds to plant in the Spring.  Children can draw on the labels and sort seeds into tiny containers or packets.  Their small fingers crunch dry pods as they discover nature’s treasures.

Craft:

The colourful autumn leaves hold the last rays of summer sunshine.  Use these leaves for making prints with paint in hues of yellow, orange, red and brown.  You can also try fabric paint on calico for bags, cushion covers or wall-hangings.

Collect a basket of nuts, seeds and twigs to create mobiles, critters, puppets, collages on boxes and other items.  Playing with nature’s gifts will inspire you to their varied uses. 

Interesting effects can be created using these items and autumn leaves to create imprints or patterns in clay.  Roll clay into a 5-10mm sheet.  Create imprints and cut them out using a plastic knife.  Pierce holes if required.  Dry slowly by covering creations with a plastic bag or cling wrap.  Sometimes, once dry they can be fired at your local pottery club for a fee of a couple of dollars.  Or you can paint or varnish to use as pendants, on mobiles and as gifts.  If you don’t have any clay, use play dough, air dry clay, or salt dough and bake in a slow oven until hardened.  Varnish to deter insects and mice.

Food:

Dry, freeze, preserve and store your garden produce.  Have a harvest feast on the Autumn Equinox.

This soup freezes well.  It is also wonderful meal for when we arrive home in the dark from our day’s activities.

Vegan Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients: 750g pumpkin, 250g potatoes, 2 medium onions, 1L water, 1 tsp vege stock or miso paste, other seasoning to taste, few springs parsley.

Peel and cube pumpkin and potatoes.  Dice onions and dissolve stock in a little water.  Place all of these into water and bring to the boil.  Add other seasoning if required (like sea salt, ground pepper, paprika) Simmer for 25 minutes.  Puree or mash and serve with crumbled fresh parsley and some freshly ground pepper.

Family Fun:

Enjoy your long weekends – go camping, hike in a National Park, walk along a beach at low tide.  It’s time to come together as a family after the long days and celebrations of Summer…