Or; Being the First Day of the Fifty-Eighth Year of My Life on This Planet.
But first, some garden shots I took when I came in from my walk yesterday afternoon. Today is brilliantly sunny; yesterday was archetypal November weather, overcast and blustery. The world was looking very end-of-season in the bleaker light.
Here are some still-bright trees from the vacant lot three houses down from us:
There used to be a house on this lot; it belonged to Mrs. Bea McCutcheon, aged ninety-five when we moved in. She used to walk her one-eyed Pekingese up and down the street and leave cupcakes for the children, "from a spooky neighbor," on Halloween, because she didn't open the door to trick-or-treaters. Routinely she used to ask me, "Can you believe I'm ninety-five years old?" No, I could not. I could believe her dog was ninety-five years old, but not her. Eventually she went to live with a daughter in Arizona, where she died of what had apparently been a longtime brain tumor. As one of my other neighbors remarked, "I want a brain tumor like the one she had." After her death, the absent daughters reappeared, held a tag sale (I still have some of her red vinyl placemats, which I used for years at Christmastime), and sold the house to the community college, which immediately knocked it down, with the idea of building a parking lot where the house had been. Now, there's already an empty community-college parking lot on the corner lot next to this one, and another on the other side of the campus, not to mention the enormous parking lot directly across the street from us, part of the actual campus, built on what used to be the playing fields for the high school when it occupied those buildings, and the street parking . . . we were all glad when the proposal for yet more asphalt got shot down at a City Council meeting. We miss the house and Mrs. McCutcheon, but my children used to go down and play on the lot, and nobody ever seemed to mind. It is a pleasant little green space, and what used to be her front-yard trees are beautiful in the fall.
We've had freeze warnings, but it hasn't really frozen yet. My coneflowers are still blooming next to the birthbath, alongside their own sculptural seedheads.
Last weekend I cut back four-o'clocks and various mints in this front bed, and pulled out miles of noxious vinca vines and ivy, to give that rosemary some breathing room. The rosemary on the far left I transplanted from the front planter, where it was getting constricted; I refilled the planter with earth and planted some lemon thyme in it. I like not having to replant planters every season if I don't have to. I'm always careful, when cleaning up for the fall, not to disturb the cover of leaves and detritus too much –– I cut things up and add them to the mix, for composting purposes and protection for overwintering insects. It's the kind of thing I try to do before the weather really turns, so that if I disturb anything, it has time to get itself back under cover again. In lots of places I leave stalks and seedheads standing, but I do try to neaten up the front beds a bit for the winter, and to have more or less a blank canvas for spring bulbs when they come up.
Peony foliage dying back. They bloomed this past spring, for the first time since I'd outraged them by moving them into this bed, and I'm looking forward to an even better show next spring, God willing.
The front border, with a mint variety my Ecuadorean neighbor calls "verbena," plus peonies, wood iris, coneflowers, lamb's-ears, Rose of Sharon, and a volunteer squash that keeps blooming though I doubt it's going to produce anything. It's all so riotous in the summer that the subdued autumn cut-back/die-back feels like an entirely different garden. I'm already looking forward to finding out how much more my spring bulbs will have naturalized in what will be their third season . . .
We're going out to dinner tonight, and I will dress up for that. My plan right now is to wear my dark-blue "Fauxwena" bamboo swing dress with layered necklaces and either boots or heels, depending on what I'm in the mood for, and either a drape cardigan or a blazer, again depending on what I'm in the mood for. For daytime I'm giving my darling new Sierra a rest and wearing Camellia with my new-to-me teal cashmere sweater, whose line I like a lot with a swing dress. Old blue leggings, old blue wool hiking socks, Doc Martens. Hair twisted up in a claw clip, though I'll probably wear it in a half-updo to go out. One reason I do keep my hair long, though I guess it's dubiously flattering when I don't do anything with it, is that I like this kind of versatility.
More shots displaying carelessly-twisted-up hair:
You can kind of see why I don't layer button shirts under my Camellia. It's mostly the way I'm standing, but even with a bamboo slip on underneath, for warmth and to mitigate against static cling, the thinner fabric shows the line of my leggings. Not the end of the world, but something I notice about this dress, that affects the way I wear it.
I think these kind of self-consciously schoolgirly outfits that I seem to keep wearing call for more restrained hair, and that that's been one of my dissatisfactions, when I've had them, with how my "looks" go together. I really need to bother doing something with my hair. It's less an age thing, as in I'm too old to have long hair, and more a proportions thing, though I'm not really able to articulate fully why shapes and balances work the way they do.
Anyway, I feel pretty good in this outfit. The bright teal sweater might or might not really go with the blue dress, but it's warm, the line is nice, and it adds a fallish note to what is otherwise a light, swingy, delightful summer dress. I'd washed Camellia last night, so there she was on the drying rack this morning, but I'm still glad that I continue to reach for her, even having worn her for a hundred days straight and gotten a little tired of her. I keep trying to wear other things, but swing dresses are just so easy.
Well, I suppose I should say something philosophical about facing down a new year, and indeed I'm having all the contemplations . . . but whatever I think about it today, it will no doubt present me with things I haven't anticipated, so I might as well just wait and see what those turn out to be.
UPDATE: Night-out look
Ebay dark-blue bamboo swing dress, thrifted Athleta drape cardigan, Snag tights in "Burgundy," camel boots, layered necklaces.
Wonky picture, trying to get in more of my updo. I bought one of those Carlin updo-making gizmos last year, and haven't used it that much, mostly because I found I didn't really like the curled-under chignon style it produces. Mine always looked rough and messy, not in a good way, not chic, the way I wanted it to look. It also fell out altogether fairly quickly. But then I realized that I could use it to roll my hair up, not under, and that was a game changer. You slide the velvet slide onto your hair and start to roll up, eventually tucking in the length, and twisting the ends of the device to tighten. Then pull the ends together and twist them so that they stay.
For me this process produces a much better, more secure updo:
Hard to get a clear picture of the back of my head in hurry, but these are the best shots.
Anyway, my hair stayed up in place all evening, and I felt elegant. A lovely night out!