the picture jeremy took of the moon and jupiter

this shot won him the astrophotography award. as judged by me.

gracefully, colourfully, joyfully, autumn enters our lives.

my mom sent me an e-card the other day with that line written on it.

and to the e-card i said, amen.

foraging

i LOVE gathering stuff. give me a piece of land with some of some nature's collectible cast offs and i'm good for like an hour, maybe even two.

yesterday we found a bounty of chestnuts on a cemetery stroll and i filled both sweater pockets and my purse. and it isn't just me. my husband shoved his hoodie full and juggled three more on the walk back.

chestnuts are neat! they're such a rich brown mahogany colour and they come in all these pleasing and varying shapes and you can play conkers with them which is a real game with chestnuts on strings and there's a whole rulebook and if you're good you can go to the world conker championships.

come on over for a conker match! for appetizers, we'll gather nuts from the backyard.

x

peter piper picked a peck of empire apples

yesterday we went to chudleigh's apple farm for a mock field trip that jeremy had to plan as part of his school work. i love jeremy's school work! it's a pretty busy place and we might have been the only two without children but we picked some apples and saw a camel so all in all, a success.

it's weird that there is a camel at an apple farm, right? this is molson the camel. everywhere there were signs telling you not to feed apples to molson but that did not stop molson from eating apples like there was no tomorrow. or like tomorrow might bring a serious shortage of apples.

a hay bale maze! we love mazes. and fall. and this little person in the background whose existence was marked by a moving red balloon.


we learned from the website when we got home that you could eat as many apples as you please and pay only for the ones you wanted to take home. had we known that we would have skipped a few meals beforehand and stocked up for winter.


pretend pumpkin patch set up for show. i had to sneak this photo in the two-second-gap between family photo shoots of babes in multi-coloured crocheted hats.


there was a petting zoo with goats and deers and donkeys and you could feed them pellets from an ice cream cone only everyone looked full except the goats who must just have a very fast metabolism.




there was a nature trail tucked away at the back of the orchard, a treat for those without strollers or time constraints, and i found myself wishing we'd come earlier to just sit in this meadow and try to catch the leaves change. it was magical. a magical meadow.

there was an actual real pumpkin patch back there with gigantic pumpkins on vines and a wall of coloured trees.

jeremy pointed to a rotten pumpkin and said 'this one's my favourite' and i said 'it would be easy to carve' and he said 'you could just use scissors' and we laughed at each other.


this last picture's blurry but i kept it in cause it comes with a story. this was the moment i lost my purse. only i didn't realize i lost my purse here, i realized it when we were lining up to pay for the 6 apples we picked and i started to melt down.

we checked in the car, we came back to the farm, we ran up and down the rows of apple trees and by the ladder and by the camel and by the goat and i thought for sure it was gone. and though i know it's just stuff and it's all replaceable and none of it matters, i cried. i held it in for as long as i could but someone drove by on a tractor and asked if we were okay and i said no, i've lost my purse.

and there was only one more place to look, the nature trail by the mushroom log, and that's where it was waiting for me, wondering if i'd find it or if it would have to spend the night alone in the woods.

people say not to sweat the small stuff and those people, i think, haven't lost their purses at chudleigh's apple farm and felt the panic of being in a sea of people who don't care about what you've misplaced.

but the good news is there's jeremy, who cares so much, and is there to hold your hand while you run looking through the lanes of the apple orchard.

this is ronald

he's a turtle with a comb over. and a penchant for grilled cheese sandwiches.

but only if they're made with processed slices and accompanied by a pickle and a perfect pile of ketchup.

one cloud two cloud three cloud four

the changing sky of fall makes the wildest clouds.

they run away with my camera and my imagination.

and glue us to our outdoor chairs where we sit, transfixed, as the ever changing images float by.

waiting seems to be the hardest part

i made pickles! with a family recipe!

mom gave me the instructions, passed down to her from my grandpa, and i followed them all and added some personal touches and i can't wait to let you know how they turned out in approximately four months!

pickles are excellent teachers of patience.

my very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas

jeremy taught me that little ditty to remember the order of the planets in our solar system, starting with the closest to the sun.

mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune and pluto only pluto isn't even classified as a planet anymore so you could just change the 'nine' to be 'nachos' and end it there.

in related news, i saw jupiter last night! it was the closest to earth it will be for another 20 years and you could see it with your eyeball because it was the brightest star in the sky but i looked through my binoculars and saw not only the planet but its four moons in orbit! i had to hold my hands steady by leaning on the window sill and i had to refocus after i got too excited and bumped them out of alignment but i got there and i saw it and it was amazing.

i really think that space is the answer to loneliness. or just puts it into a bigger perspective? you think you're lonely now, how about the universe!

no but really. we're part of something huge and important. and beyond our understanding. and sometimes that's all you need to know.

morning afternoon and evening

an ode to fields

i ran into a field on saturday. just like this. with my arms up and a big hug ready for the sunshine and the freedom and the lovely weight of weekend possibilities.

and i wished everyone could run and jump in fields.

and then i lay down to watch the sky change and the birds migrate and the whole time jeremy was looking for me and when i found out that i was hiding and being looked for without ever knowing it, i felt special.

spell check suggests 'nothingness' for 'amazingness'

those two things are like opposites so if spell check was 'opposite word check' that would have been a successful suggestion. as it stands it's inappropriate and way off the mark.

i cut my finger slicing a bagel on monday, i guess i've been a bit distracted because my work office moved and it's september and last i checked it was june. being with jeremy has made me hyper aware of time and how i need more of it because i need more of it with him.

i want to sit in all those moments in between now and when we're old. i want to sit comfortably in them in a reclining chair with a cup of tea that takes hours to cool.

i started ballet again and am glad to say the slipper still fits. my teacher had the same corrections, (lean forward pull up pull out with your plie) and the same compliments (nice arm sharp tondu good expression) and i found myself feeling at home even after a year.

i guess that's the thing about home. you can always return there in your unitard.

no but like for serious

lady gaga is amazing. anyone who sites prince, michael jackson, david bowie and queen as their inspirations can be immediately catapulted to amazingness but compound that with costumes and creativity and i want to write her a letter and become her best friend.

in the meantime i'll settle for improv living room coreography to the bad romance video.

shine on you crazy diamond!

love,

a little monster

how to: make acorn magnets

step one: collect acorns from your lawn

step two: pull their hats off

step three: hot glue a round magnet on the underside of the acorn hat

just because you’re an atheist, that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t love for things to have reasons for why they are

connecting the cosmic dots

i like to think of the lines that connect the matter of my existence. how events lead to other events, how themes recur, how the instances connect visibly with thick wool yarn on a peg board. seven degrees of me and the universe! like an existential version of the kevin bacon game.

change of address

remember when i moved into a tree in british columbia? i've decided to down-size, like actually make myself miniature, and move into a tree in phil's backyard. it's a faster work commute and we're really saving on groceries.

sweet sunny september