preserved autumn

in our house, we spend a fair amount of time each year preserving summer’s sunshine for winter: we gather our honey, we can peaches, we make apricot and strawberry jam, we make large batches of pesto and freeze it, and we fill quart-sized freezer  bags with as many tomatoes as we have time to peel. by the time autumn comes around, our freezer is full. so i rarely find myself asking what the season provides in abundance, that we might crave in winter. but if i did stop and consider it, the answer would most probably not be a food, but rather color.  luckily, autumn butts right up against winter, and there is no better preservative than ice. today, i found a tiny bit of preserved autumn. i could almost taste it.

autumn maple leaf in ice