È arrivato l'autunno! And darkness is falling...

Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) from the bedroom window. 

Due to my seed collecting and my husband's grape harvesting, bottling, and pressing, for us autumn is when we return to our roots. It's when I begin to feel like cooking again and it's when I return to my Catholic past. From now until Easter we'll cover all of the holidays with food and friends. Once Easter hits though it's back to the "fields" for both of us. (I still have 4 weeks though before Mr B returns home for winter from California. That's when the kitchen really gets going!)

Burst of gold from the bedroom window. That's our old garage behind the house and beside it is our overgrown willow  arbor. (This is what happens when you break your pruning fingers.)

This year I will be making one last road trip to the San Francisco Bay area and I will be taking everyone along with me again. Believe it or not blogging along the way makes the traveling a bit less lonely. And trust me, the Redwoods in the rain and fog can be very scary even for this girl from the heavily forested Pacific Northwest. 

Looking into the heart of the Cyclamen. 

Before I leave I still have so much work to do and that's why my blogging has been a bit slow. At least the Ikebana work has been picking up thanks to my enrollment in a course. My teacher is a wonderful woman I met over 20 years ago when I worked with her husband as an ESL helper for Japanese exchange students. He is also a much loved Buddhist minister and it was such an honor to me that he came to our class solely to say "Hello" to me on my first day. I am still smiling about that! Glowing really.

Perennial Impatiens arguta.

Autumn has had a few surprised for me in the garden too. With the onslaught of a lot of rain, my perennial Impatiens has gone crazy with bloom after bloom. It is so beautiful to see such delicate jewels just before it's the end of the season. The lilac is so unlike so many of the other fall colors but I don't mind a bit.

I couldn't help but chuckle a bit when this box arrived on my doorstep. It's full of dried plant material for crafts, as well as heat sealable teabags and dried kelp for making compost teabags. 

There are all of the last minute craft projects too that I have been planning for my shop. Some are things I have always wanted to sew, like sachet bags, and some are new ideas, like bath time teabags with fresh local dried hops and honeycomb extract from France. Sounds tasty too, right?

Dried Praying mantis. 

Autumn is also the time we have to say goodbye to things we find beautiful until the next season, and when I found this amazing specimen dried between my exterior and interior window today, it saddened me and I felt a little tear well up in my eye, but there will be more Praying mantis bugs in my garden next year. Until then, it's a little bit of feasting around these parts...

"Ogghiu di 'n summa, vinu di 'mmenzu e meli di 'n funnu." 

"The choice oil is from the surface, the best wine is from the middle, 

and the best honey is from the bottom."—Sicilian saying

(I tend to practice my Italian this time of year too by singing a lot out of boredom so here's a little Italian pop music courtesy of my favorite Italian singer Jovanotti. The first one is a corny love song, the second is a classic funny song about love, and then the last one is s new "magic happy" song I am kind of really into right now and the foster kids seem to love it because it's bouncy: Baciami Ancora, Bella & La notte dei desideri).