…No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds. November!
~ Thomas Hood

For me, November is the quiet “in between” month of the fall. It fits nicely in between the colorful splendor of recent weeks and before the festive sparkle and lights of the December holiday season. If October is the crescendo of fiery reds and glowing oranges then November is the hush that follows – the bare branches with just a few yellow leaves hanging on, the air is cold and sweetly scented with the earthy tones of wood smoke. November is the soft exhale after an active season of apple picking, pumpkin patches and Halloween.

This Robert Frost poem does a good job of summing up my feelings for November – and life in general.

November may not have the dramatic flair of October but I think every season has its beauty. The delicate outlines of frost on fallen leaves, a seed pod cracking open to release the promise of next year’s growth, a dormant meadow with bare trees – their branches silhouetted against a soft sky. A little trio of mushrooms, the guardians of the forest floor before the snow sets in.

When thinking of November, most people’s thoughts turn to Thanksgiving turkeys, pumpkin pies and Black Friday. But surprisingly, there’s a lot more to celebrate this month! I did a bit of digging and learned that November is known for some other interesting and odd commemorative days.

November 9th proudly boasts being National Scrapple Day! For those of you not in the know – Scrapple is an…interesting dish with German origins, well known among the Pennsylvania Dutch and mid-Atlantic regions. It’s one of those “no hog parts left behind” mash-ups of various organ meats and pig scraps, bone broth, cornmeal, buckwheat and spices – all baked up into a meat brick which is then sliced and fried in lard, oil or butter. It’s commonly served with maple syrup. Yikes! No offense intended to my Scrapple-loving friends out there!
(If you’d like more information on the history and making of Scrapple – click here.)

For my friends out there with a sweet tooth, November is Banana Pudding Lovers Month! An unusual dessert choice – November doesn’t exactly scream “Bananas!” But hey – rich vanilla pudding, vanilla wafers, ripe bananas and whipped cream? You really can’t go wrong!

Banana Pudding Lovers Month was established in 2011 by the Rodger’s family of Rodger’s Puddings, creators of Rodger’s Banana Pudding Sauce. It was meant to encourage the celebration of the wonder that is banana pudding and give people an excuse to make the confection with a healthy side of nostalgia!

And finally, November 23 is Fibonacci Day! Leonardo Fibonacci was a highly influential mathematician of the Middle Ages who popularized a mathematical number sequence that would later be known as the Fibonacci Sequence – a series of numbers where one number is the sum of the two numbers before it. For example 1, 1, 2, 3 is 1+1 = 2; 1 + 2 = 3 and so on. As the sequence goes on, it gets us closer and closer to The Golden Ratio.

Fibonacci Day is celebrated on 11/23 because those are the first four numbers in the sequence.

One of the coolest things about the Fibonacci Sequence and The Golden Ratio is that it can be found all over the natural world – in the swirls of a seed head of a sunflower, in the veins of leaves, in the spiral of a seashell and even in our own bodies, in the cochlea of the inner ear!
(If you’d like to take more of a deep dive into the history of Fibonacci and the Golden Ratio – click here.)

November – an underestimated month where you can take a breath and enjoy the slow, quiet moments before the busy holiday season kicks in. A month where you can take a walk, notice the changes in the landscape while looking for the Fibonacci Sequence and Golden Ratio in the trees and think about the banana pudding you are going to make and enjoy once you get home. Scrapple optional.

If you liked this post and want more autumnal and Cottagecore vibes, click here, here & here to check out more seasonal posts.