Frost on the Pumpkin...

We saw the first migrating geese fly over last week. I start to become anxious waiting to see them this time of year. It's easy to miss them if I'm in the house or shop - you cannot hear them then. But outside their presence is heralded by such a commotion of honking you hear them long before they are in sight, even when they fly so high you can barely see them. I don't think they can flap their wings without commenting on it! This annual migration is one of the great hallmarks of the turning of the seasons for me. More than anything else it signals the coming of long nights and cold weather.

And now we have had the first hard frost. It dipped into the 20's last night, putting an end to all the watering and much of the work in the garden. Also an end to the basil and tomatoes and such – after we eat all the ones that are now ripening in the house! We are still trying to finish all the pre-winter list. Cleaning gutters, coiling hoses and removing filters that keep the drip irrigation from clogging. There is still firewood to split and stack, projects to wrap up, hammocks, folding chairs, and such to put away until next year.

The business prepares for what we call the "Holi-Daze", when we work hard to ship gifts on time for our customers while we ponder when we will get to do our own. All the soap for Christmas has to be made long before Thanksgiving to be cured and ready in time. Woolie soaps must be felted and gift assortments figured out, baskets ordered, flowers dried, all well ahead of November. The economy is bad in many ways, but we must prepare as if everything is the same. We cannot afford not to be there for our customers.

We love putting together the gift assortments. We try to anticipate what might be most fun, most useful, most attractive to each of you when you see the gift in a store display. For the gifts that are sold via the internet store we try to give each a personal touch to compliment what you have chosen to put in the basket. The dried flowers we add are from our, or a friend's, garden. A few are wild everlasting flowers that we gather locally. Our feeling is we try to make each gift as if it is for our own best friend.

We hope our soaps and other products are the personal gift that pleases all who receive them. See our offerings on Simmons Natural Bodycare's gift pages.