Autumn Equinox

Autumn slanting light and summer weather.  This is our Bay Area climate.  The vegetable garden is winding down.  Time to freeze tomatoes, pesto, applesauce.  Shell the dried beans.  Soon the sad day will come when I have to buy lettuce.  The peppers have been great this year.

Flowers winding down too, things starting to look overgrown.  Trying to keep the new plants going until the rain starts.

A feeling of unsettledness. Uneasy about the national and international news.  Family complications.

Getting back into the painting groove.  Aiming for "lightness".

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.

Elizabeth Lawrence

September Full Moon

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, 

of gathering together.

For nature, it is a time of sowing, 

of scattering abroad.

Edwin Way Teale

I made the first batch of applesauce.  Tomatoes are starting to pile up and we had pesto for dinner.  In the last month the caterpillars formed cocoons--a green one on a green anise stalk and a dark one on the dark red lettuce.  The bean plants are drying.  Birds in the buckthorn, squirrels wreaking havoc on the apple trees, tasting as many as possible.  The sunflowers are almost finished but the Japanese anenome, lantana and plumbago are blooming.

A feeling of not-knowing. Gratitude for all I have materially and for the relationships I have, even with their difficulties.  Not knowing the direction ahead with family, with art.  A sense of waiting.  The sun is lower in the sky, the light is different, not as clear.