The Finest Season.

There is a chilly~ness to the air these mornings, do you feel it? It's time to close the windows, take the door off the latch, usher the chill and the curious leaves out the door as we close it. After the school run I return to find cats snoozing in sunny corners,  and a stillness settles on the empty house, a stillness settles in me.

We have wandered into the outer skirts of Autumn, where the leaves still cling to the trees like bright banderole, little flags waving to us in their finest hour, and as we pass beneath them I am surprised to find somehow the routine of school has brought with it a familiar comfort.

One that includes being witness to that magic hour of dawn, of leaving the house before the sun has warmed the earth, the cool air like a whisper on my skin. One that includes condensed little parcels of productive time, so different from the carefree, whimsical summer-time, and considered meals that are a little more protracted in the making, providing a sense of sustenance and nourishment, and one that brings an actual bed~time for our brood of dearlings.

Scattered in amongst the sunlit days, we have had squally showers and a fetch of wild winds that howled for two days and a night causing many people to lose many things, including their nerve, their dignity, a small child on a bike (nearly), their gusto, and an imaginary toupee!

It was wild, but still we ventured out, and on one of the days we took to the hills after school, headed inland and up, wound our way through tree lined roads to a warm welcome in little house that nestles there, in amongst the green.

Will and Anita's woodshed. Preparing for winter.

And so, as small boys scattered, an echo of footsteps and excited voices, (emerging shortly to race into the garden as bears and knights and monsters), we mothers sat, hands wrapped around warm coffee cups, and talked up a storm, a long overdue catch~up kind of talk, the kind that covers many months and miles in a mere couple of hours.

The bounty of their garden.

We are submerging slowly now, into this, the finest of the seasons, it's bounty a cornucopia that swells around us by the day, urging us on towards the darkening of the year, the hedgerows and trees bowed down in sweet supplication, whispering to us, 'Jam! Jam! You need jam!'

And as I submerge, I soak it all up, as though storing in my bones for winter the finest of this season, the warmth and bounty and goodness, and I take it with me as I move through the cooling air and the first falling leaves, and all around me I hear murmurings of how you all love autumn best, and how you too are overcome by a growing desire to make and mend and settle in to the evenings that are drawing in around us.

Anita's handmade soap.

And although my plans for the end of the week were somewhat scuppered by my enthusiasm to do just about everything with my newfound long hours in the morning, and in doing so, I went and put my back out. So instead of getting any of the actual making that I had been planning, done, I have been killing time by playing with both Instagram (See the link in my sidebar on the right) and Pinterest, (Click the link to see!) with great enjoyment, I might add, but somehow just not quite so satisfying as bringing a vision in your head into 'real life'.

So here this showery Saturday finds me, in between hobbling around like a bent old Sean-bhean bhocht (poor old woman!), attempting to let go of my disappointment and just do what little I can. At least my favourite blue coat now has all it's buttons, and I may just finish my latest redwork.

And it is, after all, the weekend, and one, now, without any plans to do anything.

What are you doing this weekend? I hope it's something lovely!