Yes, this is a beautiful time of year, and there is absolutely no sense in looking gloomily ahead, like Eeyore, to the very worst aspects of winter, days so dark that you have to drive with your headlights on at noon, and having to buy snow tires.

Maybe you lucked out last winter with all-season tires, but will you push your luck two years running? Snow tires are a big expense.

Then, of course, coming up there’s Christmas, and let’s just hope we don’t fall on the ice, because that’s going to set us back big time.

Yes, and what about Thanksgiving?

Never mind all that. Let’s not borrow trouble. All we need to do right now is find a pumpkin for Halloween and apples to make pie. Cider would be good too.

“Scrumpy” is a word for cider, derived from the very British sounding scrump, which can be either a verb, meaning specifically to steal apples, or a noun, used for dried fruit, or, rather unkindly, for elderly folk. Did you ever see one of those little applehead dolls made by carving a face into an apple, which withers as it dries?

The end result is cronelike, even witchy. Scrumpy.

My sister used a King Arthur Flour recipe she found online to make boiled cider. After a six-hour simmer, a gallon of cider reduces down to a pint, according to the recipe, resulting in a syrup with a honeylike consistency and an intense, concentrated apple scent, useful in pie-making.

The problem is that within a six-hour time span it is difficult to keep one’s mind on a watched pot. Unfortunately, my sister’s cider boiled over onto the stove top at one point and eventually scorched, ruining the flavor.

“The flavor was amazing before the scorch set in,” my sister says. Scrumptious.

The recipe does give fair warning that overcooking will give an overly thick, sour or bitter result. I foresee that I am going to feel compelled to try this recipe, despite the pitfalls.

They say cold nights sweeten the apples, and the weather is definitely getting colder. I’m done with covering my garden with sheets this fall. At some point a person has to give up the ghost.

Do you believe in ghosts?

With Halloween coming the subject keeps coming up. It is my theory that everyone believes in ghosts in the middle of the night. Nobody really knows how the whole ghost apparatus works, though.

For example, it seems obvious that there should be more ghosts every year since human beings evolved, and yet cavemen are glaringly absent from the paranormal record.

Even in fiction, Neanderthals never materialize at a seance. You certainly don’t hear about Denovian ghost sightings. Apparitions are mentioned in “The Iliad,” but most spirits hail from the last few centuries. Maybe they get tired eventually and settle down.

On the other hand, people do report visitations from departed dogs.

This is a subject to reflect upon as Halloween approaches.

Although it is our way here in the North Country to make fun of leaf peepers, those foliagephiles who come to view the autumn colors and then cause more car crashes than white-tailed deer by suddenly stopping or veering off the road to photograph the scenic view, I must admit that I was out leaf peeping myself recently. And yes, I was veering off and making sudden stops with the best of them. Or the worst.

As I stood obstructing traffic on a curve by a drop-off above the Boquet river on state Route 73, discussing cameras with some other old scrumps from Canada and New Jersey, I realized that I was filled with the joy of the season, not regretting the past, complaining about the present or fretting over the future.

It was only for a moment.

Euphoria is transitory. It can’t last. It’s like wanting to prolong the sensation of wellbeing you get after swallowing a few sips of wine.

Of course you try, but your best efforts result only in confusion. Not that I was drinking on this occasion.

I got back into my car and drove off before I caused an accident.

Have a good week.

(Martha Allen lives in Keene Valley. She has been writing for the News for more than 20 years.)