Sweater Weather comments: 178

These golden days. It has been absolutely thrilling to go out walking together in the neighborhood and the park. We've walked down the road to get breakfast or lunch or coffee in various places every day. It sounds so simple but it feels like more than enough. I got this cute cape this year and I love it.

As you may know, my favorite genre of movies is Christmas movies. I am beyond excited that they have already started playing them on the Hallmark Channel (favorite channel). Some people don't like that they start so early but I do! Nevertheless, it's shocking that Thanksgiving is already the week after next. I'm pretty sure we are hosting it at our house because we usually do but I haven't even given it a thought yet. Since everything takes a lot longer now I should probably start thinking. Perhaps it will be a potluck this year. . . .

Such a very lot to be thankful for. Oh my stars. Sweet girl.

Settling In comments: 289

Oh. Warm little baby hand on my chest as I write. Dreaming-baby breath on my chest. Birds and squirrels everywhere in the front yard. A riot of yellow leaves and fluttering birds. Joanna Newsom playing somewhere else in the house. Clover Meadow sleeping on the ottoman. The light rain falling. The past two days have been mostly just about us; our visitors have started to disperse and we are finding our daily rhythm alone together. Andy is home for six weeks. He has skipped more than a few vacations over many years to save up that much time off. It's so awesome, so very awesome to be able to have him here at home right now. (Actually, right now he's at the store. But, yeah.) I have the window behind me open. The air is cool and damp and gray, with birdsong and wet pavement sounds. My prayers go out to everyone on the East Coast who has been affected by superstorm Sandy.

Thank you so much for all of your incredibly kind comments these past two weeks. My heart is so full of your words and wishes. Thank you. Thank you also for commenting on Amelia's name, but I can't take credit for that! It was definitely a group effort. Her birthfather wanted her to have four names (first, two middle, last). Her birthmother picked Amelia; we picked Beatrix; and then her birthmother picked Jolene. I think they are all beautiful names and I love how her whole name came together with something from each of us.

We had our first walk up to the bakery the other day. The weather was gorgeous — cool and crisp and the leaves blazing bright. It was the first time I'd been out of the house just for whatever-time in weeks, really! I carried her in the Moby (which is where she spends most of her day) and it felt so good to stretch my legs. I think she loved it, too. Andy walked the dog with a bottle in his back pocket, just in case. We got chais and wandereded through our familiar streets together. People smiled at us, which felt strange and wonderful. We smiled back. Walked slow. Crunching leaves. No rush. No rush at all.

Octobery comments: 112

I need to fuss with the garden today. It looks a wreck. Not that I know what I'm supposed to do with it. But I'd better do something or the neighbors will start complaining. That's part of having a garden in the front yard. It's everybody's garden. Though, wait, I'm the only one who works on it. Hee hee. I'm wishing I had grown a pumpkin now. I see them in the other parkway gardens around town and they are big and charming.

The leaves haven't really turned color yet, for the most part. It's been very dry and very clear. The past few days have been terribly windy, and Clover and I don't like wind at all. We're sensitive girls. They say that there will be good star watching this next week. Perhaps a trip to an open field tonight. Our house is so tree-wrapped and the neighborhood so bright it's hard to see stuff.

I'm still trying to work on my freezer food. Do you have any suggestions for good things to make that freeze well? A lot of people asked me if I was going to thaw out that apple pie I froze before baking. I don't plan to. But I've never actually done it before so I'll have to let you know how it goes.

Look at the gorgeous wedding cake my sissy made! She's amazing. I love her.

And the best randomly received magazine-selling pitch ever. We'll take a subscription to Fine Cooking. Just to prove about the no rocks.

Early Autumn comments: 92

Before the rains come, there is warm, early-autumn light. It's the best light. Oh, I love love love it.

On Sunday afternoon we wandered around up near the park near the woods. When we were tired we climbed a long hill and put the quilt under that big green canopy of leaves you see up there and were drowsy. So nice. Warm. Dappled light. The sound of leaves rustling. No talking. Just resting. Quiet. Then some dude came along and started playing the BAGPIPES. For an hour. It had to have been an hour. And when I say playing I mean practicing. Not even complete songs. Just parts. It was seriously deafening and sort of hilarious. He cleared out the park. We were too lazy to move. Portland.

Baa Ram Ewe comments: 82

I feel like my Quill is never-ending. I truly wish I had kept track of how many hours I've spent working on this thing. The tally would be an impressive answer to the question that incredulous, goggle-eyed non-crafty people like to ask crafty people: "How long did it take you to do that?" With this one I'd say [incredulously, and with (bloodshot, half-crazed) goggle eyes] THREE THOUSAND HOURS. And then that'd be the end of that. And probably the end of the friendship, because clearly I don't have time to maintain friendships. Beause of the Quill. Agh.

We went to the sheep show (that's what we call it) over the weekend. It was a gorgeous weekend here. Crisp and clear and early autumn in all ways. I bought more yarn and felt more urgency than ever to finish Quill and start something else. I need to be smarter about how I'm picking my projects. I need to pick things that I can finish while I'm still happy with them. Not things that make me want to stuff them in bags and shove them toward the bottom of the closet when I'm 84% finished. I love the Quill but I cannot seem to memorize that lace edging. I have to stare at the chart the entire time I'm knitting. Not relaxing. Each little pointy thing is twelve rows (with only six rows to memorize, not counting the purl rows). Is that a lot? I'm gonna try again. It's getting colder now. I need this thing around my neck, not in my lap.

Cloudy Fall Morning comments: 106

Cloudy, and I can almost feel water in the air for the first time in ever so long. Hallelujah. Happy dance. Suddenly, under the flat gray light, I can see the fall colors. More dancing. I harvested the onions, a couple of eggplants, my precious butternut squash, another smattering of candy-sweet tomatoes this morning. I still can't get over what those tomatoes taste like. The vegetable beds are quite worn out. I thought about watering and decided, again, to let it go. I'm not sure how much is left to take out. Sweet potatoes — I don't think they did much. Carrots — the one I pulled was about the size of one of those little yellow Ikea pencils. This garden was a great experience for me.

Out there, the sound of acorns falling from the great oaks onto the pavement and the tops of cars. It's the sound of my childhood Septembers. The constant pinging of falling acorns on Forest Avenue. We had so many ancient oak trees there, and that sound of acorns falling, and bouncing, like other sounds from that place — freight trains coming then going, the cooing of an unseen mourning dove in the morning, cicadas, another freight train — is something I feel like I never hear enough. It's a sound you don't remember you've forgotten until you hear it. And it sounds like it's all yours.

I've decided to become a frozen-food person, and this morning put frozen pizza dough and two little frozen chicken pot pies from the bakery (where I go almost every morning to get a chai — kind of a little luxury I allow myself) in the freezer. It felt kind of like the year that my friend Allyson and I decided that we were French and wore stripes and scarves and spoke only Franglais, or the time I decided that I was a ballerina, and stood, whenever still, in fifth position. Or sometimes first position. Usually fifth, so there would be no mistake. This morning I decided that I would be one of those people who cooks things like soups and stocks and chilis and curries in big batches and freezes them in clearly labeled containers, and who then, when she is hungry, takes them out and cooks them for dinner. Eureka! This actually seems do-able. I have very low expectations for myself with meal planning. But this seems do-able. I have a freezer, and electricity. I want to believe.

September mornings forever remind me of traveling around Europe when I was a lass. I pulled out my scrapbook from that trip this morning. I haven't looked at it in ages. Photo taken in September of 1990, in Berlin, when I was twenty-one.

Catch Up comments: 83

I slowed to a wander on Sunday. It felt good to be so lazy and slow. The weather has been gorgeous. Bright and dry and just generally so pleasant. Our yard has been suffering the drought. It's been months since it's rained, I think. I was watering a bit through the summer and then I got busy and stopped. Andy spent the day moving the hose around from place to place. He did an imitation of a hydrangea before and after watering that was spot on — I wish I had a video. "Before" was this sad, parched, drooping, reaching thing; "after" he was bouncing in place and looked like he was on his way to a birthday party. :-) Pretty cute. I think the yard is a bit happier now, but honestly, I'd be relieved to stop worrying about it. A good rainy day would be most welcome, but all week we're supposed to be mid- to upper-eighties, and clear as a bell.

Before the slow, we packed and shipped orders, cleaned the fridge, got some groceries, did some laundry, watched television. Every night lately we've been falling asleep before 10 p.m. I made the blueberry cake again with marionberries, and a version of this pasta for dinner, but with sage instead of rosemary. I need to get it together, and get back into my cooking routine. I feel like this happens every year at this time! I need to sit down with my cookbooks and get inspired to cook for fall. Maybe actually plan [shivers involuntarily]. I suck at that. I don't mind the cooking; it's the thinking of what to cook every day that hinders. "What should we eat?" "I don't know. What do you want?" "I don't care. What do you want?" "I don't know. Pizza?" And pizza, because unless I'm actually looking at a cookbook or a recipie or a restaurant menu it's the only food I can seem to remember. I have the palate of an eighth-grade boy now. Hrrmmmm.

Making a new little preppy-hippie quilt. It's very yang. Thinking about maybe putting together a little quilt kit this winter. I think that would be really fun.

Puppers worries so when her Andy is down in the front yard without her. . . . What if he should fall down? Or need help with the sprinkler? Or someone should walk by? Or someone and A DOG should walk by? "Could you open this thing please?"

Last year (or maybe the year before?) the dahlias were $2.50/bu. Inflation. Still, a bargain.

September Field comments: 98

Somewhere around Corbett, Oregon; September 10, 2012. Pretty psyched about that bee photo :-).

Town and Country comments: 82

We've been here and there. Ramblers and loungers. A nice mix for me. A little bit of home and a little bit of away for a day. Then home by dinner. Late-summer sunlight. Fields and furrows. Gray layers of light over fuzzy blue hills. Cold mornings and cold water. Regiments of geese fly low over the river, right above our heads. They thread their ways upstream, stopping to rest just beyond the rapids. Four eagles circle high in the clear, sharp light, talking to each other. Yellow leaves flashed silver as they fell. My body warmed the shallow pool of river water in my chair. I dared not move lest I chill it again. He examined stones and skipped rocks the size of salad plates. A river crayfish tried to git me. I insisted it was lobster. But Andy saved me. I have certain fears: going into banks, vinegar, wet cat food (disgusting beyond belief), crustaceans. He does his best, as always. Helping me always. My dear love.

Thank you thank you — for all of your orders, and your kindest words about the new ornaments and the new shop, and all of your gentle kindnesses, and constant generosity, and sweetness here all summer, and always. I feel raggedly sensitive lately, in good ways and difficult ways. I'm disheveled and flushed, a purple and smudgy September plum, ready to bust and ooze at a light touch, taking things personally, and I'll take your kind words personally, too. I'm grateful for them, more than you'll know.

Monday. He picked lavender for me while I sat in an old metal lawn chair with a poufy cushion and ate a chocolate ice-cream cone. Bees and butterflies rushed the blossoms, so many it felt like a fairy meadow. Harvest ball. There was a box where you put your five dollars for a bouquet. A broken-down shed. An ancient apple tree. Across the field, a wooden house. Once I was in the chair I felt like the field felt: tired, wilted, relieved. Four o'clock. Nothing else needed, then, beyond his quiet company and the holy, golden sunlight. How grateful I am for all these things.

Late-Summer Slow comments: 59

The air conditioning was on, and then it was off. We sat in the river almost all day on Friday (the hottest), but by Saturday it was strangely cool and weirdly gray and wanted to rain (though it never really did). I sat in the dining room working and drinking hot chai in a long-sleeved blouse with the breeze blowing through all the windows so insistently that I was cold (and pleasantly confused, and pathetically relieved).

I made pasta with our gorgeous little tomatoes, pasta with olive oil and a little garlic, swirled around with the fresh tomatoes (which were so easy to peel, even raw, without blanching), a handful of basil (also from the garden), and big chunks of fresh mozzarella. Mama mia, that was some good dinner.

I keep forgetting to write out the chocolate cake recipe and the soup recipe! Okay, this week.

I did eat some Indian rice pudding. I could eat rice pudding every day if given the chance. I got mine from a take-out restaurant this weekend, but sometimes I make it.

Alicia's Kheer

4 c. milk
1/2 cup basmati rice
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cardamom

(I don't know if this is really a traditional kheer, but I like it.)

Rinse well and then soak basmati rice in cold water for a half an hour. Combine milk, rice, condensed milk, and sugar in a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until milk is reduced by half and pudding is thick (or however you like it). Add cardamom, stir, and let cool to room temperature before serving.

I have a sleepy puppers on my lap right now. I wish I could lounge with her (actually, I wish I was that girl on the black pony up there) but we are in full ornament-kit production mode, so it's time for bad Lifetime movies, gallons of iced tea, and several hours of repetitive motion arranging little piles of wool felt. Love it!!!