Capturing all the autumnal flowers this last month. They were the summer's beauty, and they hang on until the first real hard frost, still colorful but looking like the ephemera that they are.
It's a cooler day again today: high of only 60F, with a low of 40. One thing I did do in the midst of all my lying around yesterday was bring houseplants in from the front porch.
Yes, that painting is crooked. Fortunately M. Poirot does not live here.
Houseplants and weights: a still-life. Today I should rescue my mandevilla from the back garden, since it's not a cold-weather plant, and bring it in. Most of my plants, meanwhile, are upstairs, on the hall window seat, where they get a good bit of sun --- it's where I've migrated most of my orchids, for example, and really anything else that can stand weeks of neglect because I forget that they're there. (Pro tip: Orchids are not hard. What they really want is to be forgotten about for long stretches, in some sunny, warmish location). I didn't even bother taking them outside for the summer, as I usually do, because I knew that if I did, other things would migrate to that window seat and clutter it up. Plants can be a kind of clutter, I guess, but at least they look intentional, as well as attractive (assuming they're not actively dying). At some point in the summer, too, the Artgirl interspersed her collection of seashells among the plants, so now the window seat is a whole installation.
Speaking of the Artgirl, she's just taken her whole first firing of pottery out of the kiln, and oh, my, it is beautiful. She's also teaching herself to play the banjo. I rarely have things like this to share about the other progeny, because most of them don't have public social-media accounts (well, the Texasgirl has her house Instagram, which is fun). The dudes keep it locked down, which is probably wise. We did talk to the Fire Son for a long time the other day --- he's finished with his season and has come out of it apparently unscathed. He's moving his base of operations from Great Falls back to Missoula, going to a bunch of weddings, and --- maybe --- picking up a winter job somewhere in the South, which would be nice. The Viking Son is apparently all involved in the university Charity Week --- a traditional autumn event which sort of defies description, except that this year the theme is medieval, right up the Viking's alley. Anyway, everyone seems to be fine, which is always good to . . . intuit, if not actually know.
Today I'm tying off and sending in this stupid essay, however incoherent it is. The more I look at it, the less coherent it seems, which is probably a signal to me to stop looking at it. We will return shortly to our regularly scheduled rota of hastily banged-out introductory essays on a random selection of poetry. And I need to pick back up with this MFA thesis, on which I've made some progress --- and she wasn't even due to send it to me until tomorrow, so as I need to keep reminding myself, we are in fact ahead of schedule, not behind.
AND I need to write some emails begging other writers for back-cover endorsements for the poetry book --- I don't have a list yet for the fiction book, but I can always think of lots of poets.
Wearing for it all:
Teal Willow again! I'm deliberately not announcing or tracking a challenge (though I did start a photo album for one), but this makes Day 5 --- IF I were going to wear this dress for 30 days straight, I'd have only 25 days left by now. so I am starting to think, why not?
Wearing her today with this cashmere pullover I got at one of the ritzy thrift shops in the mountains, plus my secondhand Allbirds leggings and Tari boots. I could wear tights, of course, and if I were going to look a little more dressed up, I would switch out the leggings for a pair of navy tights. But for everyday-at-home: eh. Leggings are comfortable, and if it warms up later, I can switch out the boots for a pair of sandals.
Anyway, here we are. These colors work so nicely together, and I'm warm and comfortable. I also like that I can use pullovers to stealth my dress past people --- not that it matters at home, but I'm going to be spending the coming weekend with people I don't know all that well, and then we'll have a houseguest (who is a noticer) the first full week in November.
So I think I'll do some practicing with layers this week --- easier to do as the weather cools down. Of course, I can abandon the whole endeavor at any time. But day by day . . . we'll just see how it goes.
LATER:
An amendment to my sweater which I think helps the look:
The ol' coin trick, except this uses a button, to define the waist a little better.
I put the button on the outside of the sweater, then secured it on the underside, so that what would show on the outside would be not the button, but the pucker it creates.
I won't leave it like this forever, because I don't want to ruin the sweater, but I like the way this trick adds definition and breaks up the straight lines of the outfit.
Turned in my essay --- hooray, though I'll have editing suggestions back by the end of the day, so it's not really finished yet. My brain feels as though it had been through several spin cycles, but I guess it will go through one or two more before this is all over. WHY this essay was so hard to write I do not know. But it was.