All in a Garden Green

I'm in a good mood. There are lots of things to be happy about today.

• The bi-color hydrangea bloom by the waterfall at work makes me smile. :)
• It is sunny again! 4 days of rain are done, and the sky is beautiful blue, dotted with white fluffy clouds!
• Because it is sunny, and not too cold (though a little chilly), it is MOTORCYCLE DAY. October 5, still riding. YAY. A few extra layers, leggings under the jeans, fleece-lined hoodie under the jacket, and a neck scarf. But still VROOM. Only bike on the road this morning...
• Wonderful fencing practice last night! Wyatt came up, I got some lesson time in with my Don. He says I'm improving. I'm glad somebody thinks so and can tell... it's hard for me to see a difference. I'll just have to do more traveling and fence more people to test this theory. Delicious crab and havarti sandwich on sourdough bread for dinner afterward, too.
• More fencing! Headed to IDD next weekend for Fall Harvest, and BBM for Fall Feast of Simplefare the weekend after.
• Sadly, skipping the Endewearde Hunt this weekend to hopefully get the yard cleaned up finally, maybe get the house organized, hopefully get at least the sketch done for scroll #2 to go out at Crown. It would have been a nice relaxing weekend, but I have to be an adult sometime...
• FREE FABRIC! I finally have bought enough linen over the past 6 years to bump the credit transfer ratio to something useful, and I have $100 of free linen headed my way. I can make a new fencing armor shirt, new 14th c chemise, viking chemise (for Birka), and have a few yards of brilliant red to do... something... with. YAY.
• Projects to start, for crown. My part of one scroll is all done, waiting on calligraphy for scroll #2, and a sooper sekrit project that I need to talk to Her Most Excellent Excellency Baroness alysten about... I need some tips on doing some of that fabulous stained glass embroidery you just finished.
• It's Wednesday, and almost 11:00. Only 2 1/2 days of work left this week... that's definitely a happy thought.

Note this. August 23, 2010. Turned the heat on in the car on the way to work. I wore a sweatshirt all day. Was almost cold. At least it's finally raining. The trees are changing already; the usual red maples turning across the street from the nursery are right on time, but I pass a sugar maple on the way to work that has dropped over half of its leaves. So. Dry. Garden is suffering.

Onto happier things, though! Wonderful weekend! Puttering around town on Saturday, got word on the Suzuki. She's been declared totaled, but the value was nearly twice what we expected, and the buyback is less than half (and we ARE buying her back), leaving a thousand dollars or so to fix her, put a downpayment on something else, pay the credit card off, whatever. All that aside, I am definitely buying a shiny shiny red bike. Once we get the loan stuff figured out. Hopefully by the end of the week. I want to ride before it gets too cold, again!

kr4sh and mylisant got married on Saturday afternoon. Pictures soon, once I get a chance to go through them all. It was beautiful. Victorian (Steampunk) themed, outdoors, in their lovely backyard. Surrounded by friends and family, and a confetti cannon. Awesome. :)

After the festivities, Max and anna_mickel and I headed to Portland for the first ever Music and Arts Festival, and CARBON LEAF, live in concert! I had no idea where to go, other than 'it's on Free Street!' We found them. In a parking lot. The nice people at the door took our tickets, and through the gates we went. We were not disappointed. They are wonderful. Max said 'OK, you can pick the music from now on'. I think I did good. :) I know I did. They even played another 20 minutes or so past 11, when they were supposed to have been done. Made me very very happy. Can't wait for their new album.

Made breakfast (pancakes, bacon, delicious French Breakfast Puffs) for M&M&J and me on Sunday morning. Was delightful. I got to use the pretty pretty Butterfly Meadow dishes that I've been collecting here and there (need to pick up the teapot/cups one of these days) (Hooray for Marshall's and TJ Maxx that have them on super-duper sale!). Was wonderful, again.

A good weekend, semi-relaxing, they're just never long enough, though.

Stop doing things and creating situations that make the people I care about upset and depressed. We all have much more fun when we're happy and in a good frame of mind. Please to be stopping with the dumping of crud on my dearest friends and companions.

( additional crud here: )

( on to happier things )

One good thing, I suppose, about the slowness at work, is that I was able to grab my camera this morning and take about 140 photos in the span of 40 minutes. For perfectly legitimate, work-related purposes, honest! Need photos for the website! But it was a beautiful, perfect Maine autumn day, with blue skies and white clouds and red leaves everywhere. There were ravens playing in the gusty wind (that was ripping through the property with intent, it seemed... nothing was upright by the end of the day...), and I heard and saw the little hawk that's been hanging around for the last couple weeks. Hoping to have a gallery up in a bit... beautiful colors and some different angles than I've done in the past. I'm pleased with how they came out.

The wagon that holds our sign is finally fixed. Only 3 1/2 months without an actual, functional sign that says "hey! this business is here!" out by the road. Argh. Amusing bit, though... we could not get the thing to sit straight on its spiffy new landing pad. I figured it out, and it was a moment of "dawning realization". Apparently when the new wheels got put on (not by one of our guys), the larger wheels were supposed to go in the back, and the smaller in the front. Makes sense... the right hand side is correct... the left hand side... not so much. That would be, I think, the reason why the front corner was always so much lower than the rest of it when we were initially trying to level it... brilliant.

Beautiful weather is supposed to continue right through tomorrow, when we have our Harvest Moon event. Mostly archery, I'm running a little bitty fencing tourney in the afternoon. Should be fun. Hopefully relaxing. Tavern night happens afterward, at the Tyger and Bucket. :)

So... Harvest Moon is tomorrow. The scroll is done and quite lovely, the prizes are set, and the Bacon Baklava is in the oven. We'll see what happens there. (it may not be as pretty as it could be, as I forgot to cut it before the initial baking *muttermuttercrud...* done now... flaky crust is flaky. So is the cook.)

The site is beautiful, the trees are all changing, and I sorely wish the sky looked the way it does in the photo right now, but it's a bit soggy and drippy, and looks to be that way for the next several days.

I need to make cute little Malagentian beanbags now... the dire weather forecast of rainy DOOM will probably move the entire event inside, which kinda makes my little fencing tourney un-doable, but I will prepare and hope for the best anyway!

The beanbags are to be used in place of arrows and bolts. Best Hunter, at any rate, shall be determined by beanbag toss in the den. Archery champion, not sure yet. Not mine to worry about. We will all have a day of games, storytelling, and music on the ocean, with excellent food and company. Just the way we like it.

(The trees, incidentally, are the same ones as in the photo for this entry. What a difference a month makes... we may have had an early fall, but it's going to be a long, beautiful one, as long as the monsoons don't come and blow all the leaves off...)

So... I would have liked to have waited about another month, really, before showing photos like these... but here we have it. Glorious Fall weather, and changing trees, in August. Isn't August supposed to be one of the awful, hot months? Dog Days of Summer, and all that?* Be that as it may, this is the view that greets me when I walk out the front door of the retail shop at work...

Not that I'm complaining. At all. I love Fall. Love it love it love it. Love the smell of the air, the cool crispness of the breeze, the colors of the leaves and flowers, the intense blue the sky seems to take on, just in time to show off the brilliant foliage. I look forward to wearing jackets again.** We can sleep with the windows open, and not wake up covered in pollen or feel like we haven't slept at all thanks to the humidity.

Driving to Pennsic, through lovely Berkshires and Appalacians, I thought I'd noticed a few trees changing... just stressed, I figured, a branch will often turn halfway through summer if it's been damaged... Driving home from Pennsic (when it wasn't pouring so hard we couldn't see out the windows), through lovely Applalacians and Berkshires, I definitely noticed trees changing. Way early. It's pretty. It is. I am hoping that we'll have an extended fall, and the leaves will stay on the trees for longer than they usually do, thanks to all the nice rain and moisture we've been having. Which is, I suppose, a major contributor to said changing of trees. They're practically drowning...

*OK, so it's not named that because all the dogs wander around with their tongues out, I know that... Sirius-ly, though... ;)
**Though if one more person mentioned "heh, if it's this cool now, just wait till winter! It's gonna be a looong one!" I was going to hit something... quite possibly the speaker of said statement. Not gonna think about it till I have to.

Food: Bread Experiment #2 was a success. Garlic bread very yummy... It's time to get new yeast, though, as the second batch baked in a schlump rather than a nice round loaf (and, I'm out...)

Fair: Most of Haus Wanderstamm (and friends) went to the final day of the Fryeburg Fair yesterday. Started out kinda cool, but the sun came out and it was quite a nice day. Saw cows. and chickens. and bunnies. and goats. More Chianina oxen pairs, some of whom were probably in Cumberland, but it's really hard to tell them apart. I do like the look of the breed, though. Just beautiful. Had fried dough for breakfast, a lovely turkey sandwich for lunch, and a caramel-chocolate apple with sprinkles for late dessert. How wonderful it is that we can eat junk, and justify it by walking around the fair for the rest of the day and working off all the bad-for-you-ness! There are 2 bags of maple cotton candy on my kitchen table that will have to last me till next year........... I don't think they will, though (and I don't think I'd enjoy them if they did. ug). A selection of photos are here: Fryeburg Fair 2007 This week, I will have to get out and take some foliage photos... the trees are beautiful; hopefully it won't rain all week like the forecast says...

Fabric: YAAAAY!! 5 yards of beautiful royal purple linen are MINE. Not like I need another gown, but for as much as I love purple, I don't honestly have many purple clothes, and no garb. Now to wash it, iron it, and unearth the sewing machine sometime in the nearish future. I haven't barely looked at it since the Insane Marathon of Sewing before GNEW... is absolutely beautiful fabric. :)

Iain & I spent the afternoon wandering around the Cumberland Fair today. Was lovely. Saw Cows. and Chickens. and Bunnies! Sat through a couple of the Oxen Pulling competitions too; pretty impressive what those guys can haul around. One set of Chianina bulls made a 100 foot pull of 2600 lbs in about 20 seconds, with no stopping. They ended up winning the event, I think. Beautiful cattle, but definitely don't want to get in their way. :)

Photos here: Cumberland Fair 2007

..but cooler. I love fall. So what if it's a month early. The moon and a couple planets (Venus? Mars? I need to look at my star charts again) were in beautiful alignment at the end of fencing practice tonight, and all was right with the world. Practice was fun, as usual; I managed to fence case without chopping my own arms and legs off as I often have in the past. Am now ready to go down to Carolingia on Sunday and play with my fencer friends there. Yay!