Every bite is direct from grampy’s garden. One thousand homegrown red fruits awake in my mouth. I taste perseverance, concentration, release and trust. I shine the dirt off and eat this tomato like an apple.

Michigan’s ingredients are unequaled in September. High humidity with low temperatures create afternoons of gentle sunshine and midnites of reflective quietness. Imagine fog, like a sleepwalker, sliding low over the land, hesitating thick above a pond, swallowing the pontoon boat you are floating on...in fresh water...at midnite...in Michigan...in September...under Mars.

Every year Labor Day waves a magick wand over the Midwest, the fetus drops, the mother pushes, and in one day summer has matured. I begin to think of autumn.

This is when the ingredients are unequaled. From vine to mouth, I dive into cantaloupe's orange pool, over my head in a deep end of dark sweetness. I devour watermelon perfectly ripe---a touch yellow on the flat side---too heavy for lifting and exploding with seeds. On a country road there is a hand lettered sign, so I pull into the farm’s drive, gather 19 cobs off an unmanned trailer and leave a few dollars in a container labeled Donation Box. Tell me what high-class chef can do better than Michigan sweet corn straight from the field. Tell me and I will abandon the garden forever. Tell me and I will light the world on fire.

This year when Labor Day’s wand wove, I was vacationing in Chicago (my other other home next to my Body, then Michigan). The seasons changed with the right spell spoken and I found myself again dining at Karyn’s in the heart of Chi-town’s young-money-itching-for-purpose neighborhood. The space itself is simply amazing fitting elegantly into the Gold Coast's heart, boasting a yoga/dance studio with seamless hardwood floors, a quaint urban greenhouse for sprouting seeds and a much appreciated parking lot for...parking, mostly. Several warm white therapy rooms are nestled in the back where Karyn offers massage, colonics and ozone baths to a clientel very interested in youth and attractiveness. In front there is a raw café filled with natural light, and this spring I attended the grand opening of her fine dining restaurant, delighted by an ambiance of elaborate simplicity---young coconut water served in tall, thin glasses.

There is an item of Karyn’s creation that must not go without mention; tasting of honey and light oil, Karyn’s Dehydrated Kale Chips are offered no where else in this country and definitely worth daydreaming about. But as much as kale is my favorite green, olive is close to my favorite fat (besides macadamia and avocado...avocado). And when I tasted the pale, tasteless atrocity atop Karyn's Bean Burrito, resembling more the pasteurized, canned black variety than any Kalamata, Gaeta or Nicoise I insist upon for myself, I could not help but take a second glance at all her ingredients.

But still, she is Karyn, not September herself. Perhaps I am being unfair. Perhaps I am still crawling through my grampy’s garden, drunk on the smell of nightshade. Perhaps I am still wiping seeds from my chin, intoxicated by the vine-ripened tomato. Perhaps I am humbled and in awe of the Harvest, realizing the greatest of joys---that nothing, not knife, not spice, not oven, need come between me and Nature herself.

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