Season's End

It is always a little bittersweet to get to this part of the fall, when I put the garden to bed, put away the outdoor furniture and fountain, and start cleaning the house to prepare for a long winter stuck inside. (I do a "fall cleaning" blitz rather than a spring one, usually.)

On the one hand, it is something of a relief to have one less thing on my plate--and the garden is a fair amount of work. On the other, it provides a bit of therapy and lots of lovely fresh veggies, which I'll miss. Still, this part of the year always rolls around, and here we are again.

Two weekends ago, my sainted friend Ellen (who will work for veggies and beer, bless her) helped me tear out the rest of the garden and put it to bed for the winter. I just left the basil (since we have been having a run of unusually warm weather, and I hadn't made the second batch of pesto yet). All I have left to do now is cover the beds with straw and pull the pump from the new pond.

Ellen taking down the last of the tomato cages.

An amphibian supervisor next to the asparagus bed.

It seems so empty now. The greenery you see is outside the garden. And mostly weeds.

Then I spent much of this last weekend putting up the last of the harvest, turning my bounty of golden delicious apples into applesauce (they're not really the perfect apple for that, being a bit too sweet, but they're ugly little organic apples and aren't great for eating out of hand) and much of the remaining basil into pesto. Everything that's left will probably die in the frost we're expecting tonight, but I've left it for the bees for now.

Basil!

Apples!

Applesauce prep. Thankfully, the slow cooker makes applesauce cooking a lot easier than it used to be.

Mystic supervised me in the kitchen.

Magic supervised me as I prepped the basil in front of the TV. It takes a long time.

Pesto ingredients. The flavored sea salt has citrus in it, made by my friend Chris. The garlic is from my garden too.

A fraction of what I ended up with. Pretty, isn't it?

I also had a visit the weekend before last from my pal Princess Alethea Kontis and her friend Lillie (Alethea lives in Florida, but was in the area visiting Lillie), which was lots of fun, and then a brief drive-by visit this last Sunday from pal Karen Buys as she drove from Bouchercon in Ontario back to her home in New Jersey. She brought me chocolate. Really good chocolate.

Princess Alethea!

Plus, I got to spend an unexpected three hours with Magic the Cat at the emergency vet on Saturday morning (we at least got to see her regular vet, who happened to be working, and it looks like it was nothing major), although I still managed to make a dump run with a borrowed truck-and-strong-guy to clear out the barn. YAY!

What have you done these last couple of weekends to celebrate the season's end?

Elisabeth Alba and I finally Meet!

Last Monday, the 16th, I got a visit from the lovely Elisabeth Alba, who illustrated the Everyday Witch Tarot. Believe it or not, this was the first time we'd met in person, even though we'd worked together for over two years! We had a great time (with her husband, artist Scott Murphy, and their dog Rayo)--and we signed a bazillion copies of the tarot set. Okay, maybe it just felt like a bazillion, but she had her 30 limited editions and I had my 10, plus we both had extras to sell on their own (or gift to friends).

She posted about the visit on her blog HERE

She's actually even nicer in person than she had been via our thousands of emails and Facebook messages. And as a few people pointed out, we actually resemble each other! Here's as few pictures from the day.

[In an aside, people seem to be really loving the deck, which makes us both VERY happy.]

They're here! Rayo is as excited as I am.

You can see my original painting of the Ace of Cups on the wall behind us.

What do you think? Do we look like we could be related?

Signing the box and the books.

Still signing!

Her pile was bigger than mine, if you can believe it!

Trying to get Rayo to sit still long enough for us to get a picture. Ha!

It was a real treat to finally meet up, and hopefully it won't be the last time. It turns out that Elisabeth and Scott are both beer lovers like me, so I've invited them to come back sometime to tour the local Brewery Ommegang and just hang out. (They live in Massachusetts, about 3 hours from me, so this may take some planning.)

A Trip to Connecticut! Part Two.

If you read yesterday's post, you already know that I snuck out for a mini-vacation to Connecticut over the weekend to visit my friends Terry and Glenn. We crammed so much goodness into two days, it didn't fit into one blog post!

Here's what we did on Sunday:

We started off by driving about 2 1/2 hours to get to the MYSTIC AQUARIUM. I haven't been to an aquarium since I was a kid, and I was seriously "four-year-old-jumping-up-and-down" excited. The Mystic Aquarium didn't disappoint, either. We saw a great sea lion show, beluga whales, penguins, and more. I had a blast. (I even dragged Terry into one of those old-fashioned photo booths, because we're that kind of friends.)

At the Aquarium!

The sea lion show was amazing.

Whale ho!

The penguins were so cute!

Silly friends being silly

Then we went into Mystic proper (I'd never been there) and we had an amazing lunch at the Treehouse restaurant outside on the top of The Oyster Club. Yes, those are oysters topped with cream and bacon :-) And onion rings. Hey--I was on vacation!

Hey, we shared!

These were one of the best things I ever ate in my life!

If you're in Mystic, don't miss this place.

 Then we wandered around town and found all kinds of cool things in all kinds of cool shops. Between Mystic, the beach, and the museum shop from the day before, I came home with all kinds of swag. But some of it was for the cat sitters, I swear!

Mystic Dragon Tea! How could I not get it?

 It was hard to leave on Monday morning, and Terry and I have already exchanged half a dozen emails saying how much we miss each other. But this was waiting for me at home, and that made it a little easier.

Magic, keeping the bed warm.

All in all, it was a fabulous 3-day mini-vacation, and I feel so much better for having taken it. But don't worry...I'm back to work on the Llewellyn 365 Day book and getting ready to dive into all sorts of promo and giveaways for the upcoming release of DANGEROUSLY CHARMING. But man, it was a great trip, and we made memories that will last for a long time.

A Visit from a Long Lost Friend

Okay--she wasn't actually lost. We knew right where she was. But it wasn't here. My friend Kathy, who inspired the fire tower watcher in Wickedly Powerful (and did an amazing job of answering questions about how the whole thing worked, so Sam was as realistic as I could make him) lived here 8-9 years ago. She was a beloved member of Blue Moon Circle, and we all pined when she left to return to Arizona to help out her daughters and grandchildren (and spend some summers up in the fire tower in Wyoming). The last trip she took out here was five years ago, which was WAY too long a time.

Recently, she came back for a two-week visit, staying with me and hanging out with me and a bunch of other Blue Moon Circle peeps. She spent a lot of time bird watching (adding 9 new birds to her lifetime list, some of whom I STILL haven't seen), and we talking (er...ranted) politics, and watched movies, and had BBQs. We even did a Lammas ritual that got some of the gang together again. It was lovely. I couldn't have asked for a nicer house guest or a better two weeks. Even if I didn't get nearly as much work done while she was here, of course. Here are a few pictures from our time together:

Meet Kathy!

She helped out in the garden, since she missed having one, and my knee still doesn't kneel.

Chris and Kathy chatting on the back deck in the evening.

BBQ at Chris's house. She made ribs in the smoker. OMG

Bobbie, Kathy, Chris, and Robin

I have no idea what was wrong with my face in this picture! Maybe I was thinking about her leaving again, since this was her last day.

I hope she doesn't wait another five years for her next visit. The guest bedroom awaits you, Kathy!

Feline Friday: The Coming Weekend

How the heck did it get to be Friday? For that matter, how the heck did it get to be July 11th? *blinks*

On the other hand, I have fun plans for this weekend--I'm REALLY looking forward to a visit on Saturday from one of my favorite people, Rebecca Elson of the The Magical Buffet blog, which is less about magic that it is about life. (Although she did just do a review of a book on goddesses that sounded so amazing, I went right out and bought it. Thanks a lot, Rebecca.)

I plan to cook up a simple BBQ for us, and as usual, we will probably just sit around and talk for hours about anything and everything. Rebecca will undoubtedly have her usual argument with Magic the Cat about whether or not cats should be allowed on people's laps at the table. And then, of course, Saturday night is full moon, which I'll be observing by myself because everyone in Blue Moon Circle is off doing something or other.

Then Sunday will be all about catching up with the yard, garden, and writing. Big surprise, right?

So what are you doing this weekend? I suspect that around here, we'll have a lot more of this:

 Reading (That's the new Donna Andrews book, The Good, the Bad, and the Emus)

 Napping (not on Saturday, since Rebecca will be here, but hopefully on Sunday)

 And checking out the new desk

I hope you have plans to do something fun!