Sweet Seasons

Talkin' bout sweet seasons on my mind
Sure does appeal to me
You know we can get there easily
Just like a sailboat sailing on the sea ....

These words from Carole King's "Sweet Seasons" are on my mind this morning. A while back I posted elsewhere that I consider blogging to be like a tapestry in that we use this "new" medium in the same way they used silks and wools in medieval times to weave a record of our lives and experiences.

Some days I wake up worrying what I might blog about on that given day. But most days something comes to me, sometimes through serendipity -- like this morning -- and sometimes through friends who provide me with interesting material and ideas. Today I got some unlooked for inspiration from morning television. While getting dressed for work, I happened to overhear a few bars of "Sweet Seasons" as I was traveling between my bedroom and the bathroom. Now, as prologue, it's important to understand that, in some blogging circles, I'm better known for my cupcakes -- virtual, of course -- than I am for scintillating wit or razor-sharp political commentary. And if you know how my mind works, then you wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that these thoughts brought me straight to Claude Monet's "series" paintings of haystacks.

Monet created several groups of paintings like these during the 1890's to explore the effects of light and the changing seasons on his subject matter. I had the good fortune to see an exhibition of the series paintings gathered together in Chicago in the early 1990's.

In the light of an autumn morning like this one, those haystacks might well look like this ....

And soon enough, as winter inexorably approaches, those haystacks will no doubt look like this ...

Mmmm, mmmm, frosting. Sweet seasons, indeed.