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The First Day of Fall: What the Harvest Teaches Us About Letting Go

by | Sep 22, 2026 | Body

There’s a particular kind of light that arrives on the first day of fall, lower in the sky, warmer at the edges, the kind that makes a garden look like it’s glowing from the inside. It’s the light of a season turning, and it always arrives with the same quiet instruction: bring it in.

By late September, the plants that gave everything they had all summer are ready to be harvested one last time. A single jalapeño plant, tucked into even the smallest city lot, can produce far more than a handful for tacos and salsas, it can produce a whole afternoon’s worth of something worth keeping or sharing. That’s the real gift of the harvest season: it asks us to slow down long enough to notice abundance, and then to do something intentional with it.

Preservation for me is an act of gratitude, and a constant process I have done for over 50 years. When you turn a late-season pepper harvest into jars of bright, crystal-clear jelly, you’re not just making food, you’re making time travel possible. That jar on the shelf in December carries September’s sunlight with it. It’s a small, edible reminder that nothing good has to disappear just because the season changed. A festive fabric wrap, and a red bow, makes a wonderful holiday gift!

There’s also something deeply grounding about the process of preservation, the careful washing, the rolling boil, the quiet fifteen minutes of waiting for a water bath to boil and   finish its work. In a world that often asks us to move fast, canning asks the opposite: patience, attention, and trust that the work you’re doing now will be worth it later. It’s not so different from the work we do at Purposeful Concepts; building something steady, season by season, meant to last.

So as the equinox arrives and the light shifts gold, consider it an invitation. Clear an afternoon. Bring in whatever your garden, or your farmers market, has to offer. And if you’re looking for a place to start, we’ve put together a printable recipe card for one of our favorite fall preserves: a sweet-heat, emerald-green Jalapeño Jelly, made from a trusted vintage recipe and perfect for pantry shelves and holiday gift baskets alike.

Here’s to the beauty of harvest and the quiet joy of preserving it.

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), with input from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other stakeholders, has developed the COVID-19 StAT Learning Series for Hospitals. StAT stands for Standards, Approaches and Tactics for COVID-19 Infection Control & Prevention. This online, mobile-friendly, self-paced training is intended for hospital infection control leaders, frontline hospital staff and hospital administrators.

With the COVID-19 StAT Learning Series for Hospitals, you will find the latest tools and techniques, along with refreshed best practices for a new era of infection prevention and control.

Each self-paced learning module is approximately 15 minutes long. Take the COVID-19 StAT Self-Assessment to determine which trainings are right for you.

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