On the same day I decorated harvest cake, I said to Ben…
“Can you imagine Christmas?”
Our 3-year-old had just been talking to us. Words streaming right after one another. He is un-bothered by mornings and has so many things he needs to say or get done.
“It’s going to be magic,” I continue. And in the same breath, I’m acknowledging the reality of the meltdowns almost inevitible to the holiday festivities.
But for now, it’s still October and breakfast needs made, kids need dressed, and we all need to get out of the house. It’s a regular calendar day. The kind that makes Christmas so special. But later in the day, I’m going to finish the Harvest Cake.
And by Harvest Cake I mean I made a strawberry box cake on Sunday evening, put it in the freezer overnight, thawed it Monday afternoon, then iced it with a container of leftover birthday confetti icing that looks more like spring than fall. I’d cut zinnias from the garden, run them under water and then place them on the strawberry cake and call it Harvest.
But isn’t it harvest, indeed?
-Spare box cake in the pantry needing used.
-Confetti icing for a birthday that remained an extra, never opened.
-Zinnias from the October garden. Some of which grew in abundance though I never pushed those seeds in the ground. Some of which I planted in the spring and survived a right chomping down from summer wildlife. Some of which are Wisconsin seeds that my sister gave me last Christmas.
But all of which are good gifts from God’s hands.
I gather up the box cake, three eggs from our chickens, oil from the cabinet, water, surplus confetti icing, and October zinnias.
And I put my hands to work, to beauty, to blessing. I call it Harvest Cake.
And isn’t it harvest, indeed?
Recipe for Harvest Cake🍁💖
Gather, gather up your blessings, uncomplicate the season, just three eggs, some oil, water, a box cake from the pantry…
Who cares that it might be strawberry? That it kinda looks like spring, that confetti icing doesn’t match the orange leaves on the ground?
Gather, gather up your blessings, uncomplicate the season, green paper plates from his August birthday, plastic forks that need used up, pull the flowers from the cake, cut into the sweetness…
Pierced by softness, this life in color while autumn nights get darker. Well, gather, gather up yourself, but only if you can. Blessings, blessings burst and pour like messes on the table, floor.
Harvest came and so we had our cake and ate it too.
-S.V.F.
(simple ideas to delight in the season)
(how it feels settling into motherhood, on being roots & not bloom)
Dead of Night – entire collection free
(poetry expressing the midnights of one’s faith and the ultimate hope & victory we have in Christ)
Sierra V. Fedorko 
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