I celebrated my birthday this week.

Maybe "celebrate" is the wrong word. After all, I'm not thrilled to be another year older. Let's just say I "observed" my birthday this week.

The observance came mostly in the form of eating. On my big day, one of my brothers bought me dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, where I devoured an 18-ounce T-bone steak, preceded by a Ceasar salad. I figured I packed in plenty of  fiber and protein – forget about that fat, that tasty beef fat – and would jog three miles the next day and be fit as a fiddle.

I failed to jog the next day, however, as my bro bought me lunch at a local Chinese buffet. I pigged out and rescheduled my run.

Today I shall jog. No doubt about it. As I pound the asphalt along Midgley-Neiss Road, northeast of town, I'll try to think about how young I feel, not how old I actually am now. I won't think about my visit to the Social Security Administration office earlier this week, when I filed for my Social Security retirement.

The sun will embrace me today, while I shuffle along the country road, listening to the killdeer and the red-winged blackbirds, viewing the maturing soybeans and the freshly cut field corn.

When I pass Emerald Mound just north of Midgley-Neiss Road, I might stop and look for a few moments and think about the Indians – those of the early Mississippian culture – who created the mound around 900 A.D.

A little farther west, I'll leave the road and cut across a field on my grandfather's old farm. I found Indian arrowheads there when I was a kid. Maybe I'll kick one up today, although I wouldn't count on it. It's rare to find ancient projectile points or tool remnants on the surface of the fields these days.

The air will feel clean, because several days of rain storms and showers ended today. The sun is bright; the sky is crystal clear and blue.

This day is, indeed, too beautiful for older guys to be feeling old. Are you kidding me? I'm not old yet. I'm aged to perfection – well, maybe not perfection.

Let me go slip on my jogging shoes. I gotta run!

Autumn begins today.

I'm a boy of summer, however. I enjoy the long summer days, baseball, fishing, and I really love three-mile walks in the broiling heat, under a radiant sun. I try to savor summer, so that the autumn doesn't seem to arrive too quickly.

I don't dislike autumn. It's just that the dreaded winter follows the falltime. Between loving summer and hating winter, I try to appreciate the autumn.

Here's what I like about the fall: the leaves of deciduous trees changing to brilliant colors; migratory waterfowl winging south; the air feeling crisp and clean; carving pumpkins for Halloween; preparing roasted turkey, with all the trimmings, for Thanksgiving; remembering the wonderful times I shared with my grandfather in the Silver Creek bottomland, hunting ducks; recalling special Saturdays with my dad, polishing and waxing the car, while we listened to the Notre Dame football game; drinking fresh apple cider; rooting for my St. Louis Cardinals to make it to the World Series, which they have done more times than any other team in the National League; eating homemade pork sausage and fixin's at the church's annual wurstmart; cheering on my St. Louis Rams, while consuming a couple of grilled bratwursts and a couple of regional beers; reveling in a few days of unseasonably warm weather during autumn's Indian summer; and smelling pumpkin pie and gingerbread in the oven.

OK, I admit it. I like autumn, even though I wish summer were still here. I hope autumn seems to linger with us for a long time, keeping winter at bay. I'm not looking forward to freezing temperatures, icy roads, coats and gloves.

I do like to play in the snow, though. Now, where did I store that sled last spring?

Field-corn stalks and leaves are normally brown and dry come harvest time, but these plants a mile and a half north of my Illinois home are withered, stunted, and black and brown. The exposed yellow cob of corn doesn't look too bad compared to the many more shrunken, ill-formed cobs. The worst drought since the 1950s – coupled with non-stop, record-setting heat – ruined what was expected to be a good corn crop this year. As I wrote during this past summer, the 2012 growing-season conditions were devastating to our farmers. And our prayers are still with them – for healthier soybeans and better times ahead.

A cold knocked me out of commission for most of the past week. I'm still feeling the aftereffects – a little coughing, which seems to loosen up junk still lingering in my
chest.

I hate colds, and it's been quite a few years since I've had to suffer through one. Until now. Heck, I thought I'd grown immune to colds. Then this one snuck up and clobbered me.

It started out as a scratchy throat, and I felt a little bit out of whack. Even though it had been some years since my last one, I knew I was feeling the onset of a dreaded cold. The scratchy throat turned to a sore throat the next day. The following day brought the stuffy head and body aches. The day after that, I thought I was going to die. And the day after that, I lost my sense of smell, and my taste buds were rendered useless. Finally, over the last few days, I gradually improved. In fact, yesterday, I was able to jog three miles.

I hate colds. This cold made me waste most of the week and made me feel like crap while I was wasting those seven days or so. I'd much rather waste time by going fishing, although  – to me, anyway – catching fish is hardly a waste of time.

Catching a cold wasn't such a bad thing when I was a kid, for I got to stay home from school. Keep in mind that I hated school then as much as I hate a cold now. Also, my mom fed me delicious Campbell's chicken noodle soup, gave me 7-Up to settle my tummy, and she would stop by the local newspaper shop, which also sold magazines and comic books, and buy me a couple of comics. A homebound kid suffering a debilitating cold needed a couple of new comic books – maybe the latest issue of "Superman" and perhaps the newest "Daffy Duck."

While my classmates were stuck in school, I was relaxing in my bedroom, surrounded by the menthol smell of Vicks VapoRub. I sipped my 7-Up and read about Superman saving Lois Lane.

Those were the days, but now is now. I have to get back to writing, mowing the grass and cleaning the garage. Of course, I'll have to find a few hours sometime in there to go down to Silver Creek with my fishin' pole and pull out some supper. I can't waste any more time. There are fish to be caught.

Weird-looking, bright, yellow globs grow from a dead-and-down oak tree in the Silver Creek bottomland a short distance west of my Illinois home. No, they're not dangerous. They're good. They're good, edible fungi – yep, mushrooms. To be exact, they're sulphur polypore mushrooms, or laetiporus sulphureus, but their common name in many areas
is chicken of the woods. These bright, blobby mushrooms are great; not only are they edible, but they're also easily identifiable and taste darn good. Chicken of the woods grows throughout the summer on tree trunks in the forest, and they can grow pretty big. The smaller one in this photo is as big as my fist, so the other one is a two-fisted size at least. Harvest them when they are young and yellow, like these, before they become tan, woody shelves. Cut them into chunks and cook them in such dishes as chicken tetrazzini, chicken curry or chicken stew, following your recipe but replacing half of the called-for chicken chunks with chunks of sulphur polypore. Bon appétit.