Enjoy It While Ye May!

I'm milking this dying bouquet because soon enough, the only flowers available will be the ones in my fertile imagination. Fall is here and it's blustery and we lost all our tender annuals- with the freaky exception of a particularly intrepid corner of zinnias! Actually, I've got quite an assortment of potted plants temporarily residing in my studio so we won't be entirely without greenery this winter. Now, where to put all those plants in the living room...
I'm also posting a picture here of an interesting visitor that Bob and I had late last week:

Look at that thing! He was BIG- way bigger than the photo suggests. This large insect was scaling one of Bob's sculptures and we couldn't help but notice him. He was carefully feeling his way up the steel... Here's his other side:

(I'm saying "he" but maybe it's a girl. I'm not sure how we tell.) Anyway, he/she was was oblivious to my efforts to document him/her.  We're guessing it's a type of cricket. Impressive and eerie.
But speaking of insects/bugs/pests/varmints/vermin and official lice...
Holy cow! Impeachment! Talk about draining swamps and all things pestilence! I can't look the news away and maybe the changing seasons becomes an advanced metaphor for changing directions in a seriously misguided administration. I could go on for days (and believe me, I'd rather discuss insects!) but did anyone really think that Rudy Giuliani (who DOES look like Nosferatu...) was a good guy? Please: the best thing that could have happened in this amazingly action packed week was that "two associates" of Giuliani's were arrested. More arrests to come. I'm on the edge of my seat and looking forward to designer handcuffs!

Fall is Coming

Boy, I hope that shows up- quite the awe-inspring spider web on a Japanese Maple in the garden! I'm not sure if the blog allows you to zoom in, but the detail was spectacular and it was one of those oh-so-elaborate and incredibly delicate works of perfection that only spiders can do. I can feel fall coming to the garden.
Things are getting squishy and damp and rotting and imploding. I'm not ready for that yet! I've been spending less time gardening and more time just enjoying the end of season mess. I actively like the garden when it starts to implode. I can't do anything to stop it and I might as well enjoy it.
That is, despite the fact that I feel like I just planted the containers and didn't I only finalize planting out those zinnias I started from seed like yesterday?!? While I appreciate the asters blooming, they too signal the approach of fall.
I am looking forward to planting bulbs (more white daffodils for the Lilac area) but I am NOT anticipating cold weather with anything even vaguely resembling glee. The summer never feels long enough.
On the other hand, the fall gets me double time back into my studio and that's a good thing. I'm hard at work on several new pieces and erupting into mass production of my WTF line of work. The annual "open studios" event happens a month from now, but I was offered the opportunity to present my "merch" at a pop-up marketplace. This means I need to do what I thought I had a month to do in a week and a half. Hahahaha! But I'll do it! I'll get it done. I guess it is fortuitous that the weather cooling and I'm in the mood to sew not dig.

Late Season Poignancy... or Laziness

The amberness of the afternoon sun got me to musing, while laying on the sun-warmed picnic table, about October light and the fleeting feeling that always visits me at the end of the gardening season. You want to quote Miss Peggy Lee and ponder, "Is that all there is?"
It also afforded me the guilty pleasure of avoiding doing anything at all. Believe me, laziness and the absence of activity and work is a rare novelty for Bob and I this year! Bob wasn't home so the two of us weren't egging each other on to acheive all those householed tasks that demand performance. Even posting a blog entry sometimes becomes work; hence the relative silence in my recent blog history...
But we have accomplished an awful lot at the house. I've earned the right to bask in this comfort as Jules runs full tilt after a wrecked basket ball.
Of course, an hour and a half later, I finished an art piece and weeded half the vegetable garden. But I needed that few minutes of nothing. Or realtive nothing, glancing over my shoulder for the apparent rabid raccoon that is terrorizing southern Southbury...
We are supposed to break through the house wall and install the wood stove "thimble" that attaches the stove to the flue tomorrow; a stone mason friend is coming to make sure we do it right the first time around. We have learned some really fun facts: like chimney bricks come in all sorts of sizes, but inexplicably, none of the fit together in any meaningful way. We thought we had become brilliant and instead of one giant block that weighs 100 pounds (not kidding!!) we decided to get smaller ones and assemble them to the same rectangular specifications. But it sort of can't be done and I guess Bob and I are glad that we're going to stucco the outside of the chimney in an attractive and- forgiving- manner next spring. Save it for the spring!
(The photo above is what happened when I tried to photograph autumn color. There isn't a whole lot of fall foliage spectacle this year so I settled for tiny animal foot prints down by our stream.)