An Odd Sort of Growing Season

Tea: Chocolate Cherry

Music: Heart, "Treat Me Well"

Time: Night.

It turned cold and windy tonight. Goodbye, Indian summer. Hello, pre-winter.

It's not entirely a bad thing. I seem to be sort of an anti-plant (which might not make sense outside my own head).

To wit: When the days get shorter and cooler, that's when I tend to grow the most -- and not merely in the "pack on the winter pounds" sense.

Autumn has always been a season of change for me, a time of doing something new (sometimes shedding something old in the process). It's when I feel most productive, most in tune with the world around me -- in short, most alive. Paradoxically, it's also when I tend to rent a room in my own head and live there for long stretches. The sense of engagement with the world is no weaker and no less real -- it's just that the definition of "world" is particularly fluid this time of year.

What will this year's change be? I don't yet know. I believe that I'll be shown, somehow, and that the sign will be unmistakable.

Here's hoping for a good harvest ...

Seasoned with Change

Tea: Jasmine Vanilla.

Music: UK, "Night After Night"

Time: Night.

The farmer's market nearest me is shutting down for the season. Today was the final Saturday, although there's one more session on Wednesday. It seems too early for that, but there it is.

We bought a few late tastes of summer -- eggplants and bell peppers -- but mostly stocked up on hardy foods that should last well into the cold months.

There are sweet potatoes, still in their coats of dirt (they keep better that way.) There are turnips, which I used to loathe -- but now seek out as soon as I feel a fall chill. There are winter squash, awaiting loving treatment with sweetness and spice.

Eating seasonally was once the norm. We've gotten spoiled as a culture, though. Want strawberries in January or asparagus with Christmas Dinner? You can get them -- but at what cost?

The cost, I'm coming to think, of connection with the rhythms of the places where we live, and appreciation for what each season brings us.

I've had Molly O'Neill's cookbook The Well-Seasoned Palate (which is as desirable for the essays as for the recipes) for years. This may be the year I finally internalize it.

At the very least, I'm going to get outside some Turnip Bisque ere long ...

Tonight's story: Frederick Stuart Greene, "The Black Pool"

Drizzlicious

Tea: Blood Orange

Music: Asia, "Without You"

Time: Night.

Ah ... wet, cool fall weather. My time is upon the world, and none too soon. I can only take so many beautiful Indian summer days before I get cranky.

Were I scripting the night, I'd have a bowl of beef and Guinness in front of me and see myself off to bed with something malty and peaty. (I have the latter, but I also have a bit of a sniffle and scratch -- which isn't a Dickensian law firm but certainly sounds like one, doesn't it?)

So I think I'll steep myself one last cup, stir in some honey and contemplate some old-school spookiness. As promised, I'm catching up and giving you three stories:

Beatrice Heron-Maxwell, "The Devil Stone"

William Hope Hodgson, "The Weed Men"

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, "Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand"

Equinox

Tea: Christmas.

Music: U2, "Bullet the Blue Sky"

Time: Night.

The seasons shift once more, and my favorite has come around.

There is much to enjoy about other times of the year, but autumn is unsurpassed in my book: the cool, crisp days, the hint of woodsmoke in the air during a night walk, the colors of the leaves.

It's the waning of another year, the dotage of another Green Man ... but it's always such a lovely passing.

Not Turning Over an Old Leaf

Tea: Cherry Vanilla.

Music: Eric Johnson, "Cliffs of Dover"

Time: Night.

Took the digital camera out for a photo walk today. There's a construction project going on about a mile from the house -- lots of cool lines to be photographed, with all those concrete culverts waiting to go below ground.

Plus, there's a ton of new easement paint on the streets and it's fall, so lots of good dead leaves are just lying around waiting to be photographed -- like the one I saw on the sidewalk alongside Nall, about halfway through the walk.

It was face down when I first saw it -- almost gray, with dark pink veins. Then the wind flipped it over, and it was purple. There weren't any others around like it.

The wind flipped it back to gray-and-pink. I took a few pictures of that side, then waited to see the purple side again. My rules, you see, don't allow me to arrange anything. I had to wait for it to turn over again -- and it wouldn't, for five minutes.

I sat and watched. I wandered to the end of the block to get a few snaps of a likely-looking surveying stake. Still no luck. (Did I mention it was cold today?)

Finally, the wind caught the leaf just right, and onto its back it went. And there, once again, was that glorious purple.

I took nearly a dozen shots in all, from both sides. Tonight, I popped the memory card into the computer, feeling like a kid about to tear into a Christmas parcel.

And you know what? Only one of those blessed shots came out -- the smallest of the purple-side pieces. All the rest had focus issues. Two had entire focus subscriptions.

I'll never get another chance to photograph that leaf. By now, it's blown away or trampled or ... or ... or.

I could be upset about that. Or I could be glad for the ten minutes or so I had with that leaf, its lines and patterns and colors.

It was a brief love, but it won't be forgotten.

Steve's Adventures in Overloadland

Tea: Black Tea with Black Fruit

Music: King Crimson, "Neurotica" (Live)

Time: Night.

Yeah, I still love New York. (Got my introduction to Central Park today. It's gorgeous, what I saw of it -- which was only a fraction. Took some pictures of a rock. Go figure.)

And yes, I still keep meeting great people (sometimes two at a time, as with the hilariously delightful couple at Alice's Teacup) and have prospects for meeting more.

But six days away from home, moving at a different pace in a different space, have me a bit discombobulated. It's a short post and an early night, and tomorrow's another day.

Sleep well.

Cup XLV: Smoke in the Water

Tea: Lapsang Formosa Alligator

Music: Daylight's for the Birds, "Worlds Away"

Time: Morning(s)/night

It's the rarest of posts for this tea-infused rambler. That's right -- it's about tea.

Scents and tastes take us back to where we've been. I smell rain and diesel together, and I don't care what my eyes and ears say -- I'm in London and it's 1986, about to turn to 1987. Lilacs and honeysuckle put me in the back garden of my childhood home. No matter where I taste it, a gyros sandwich reminds me of Missoula, Montana (that's where my sister once lived, and we were visiting her when I first tried it).

Man. Now I want a gyros.

Anyway ... all of the above, I understand. Scent (upon which taste depends) is the sense of memory.

But the smell and taste of this tea put me somewhere I haven't been before -- at least, not that I can remember. One taste and it's morning, autumn, in a pine forest. Someone has gotten up to make the fire, and the smoke hangs in the cool air.

I have no easy explanation for the phenomenon. That doesn't mean there isn't one. But ten hours after the last steeping, the whole experience remains vivid as memory, (un)familiar as a dream ... and the tea is gone now.

Tonight's story:

Ada Trevanion, "A Ghost Story"

Cup IXL: One More Red Daydream

Tea: Joseph's Dream with Honey

Music: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Get Ready for Love."

Time: Night.

I've been driving all over northeast Kansas for the past week -- and it's not good for my neck. Not because of the driving, but because of this glorious red distraction along the roadsides and hillsides.

I don't know the name of the plant -- a hip-high shrub -- but its leaves are this color.

It's already starting to fade, taking on purplish undertones -- and that's its own kind of gorgeous against the yellow of the Flint Hills.

The world is going to sleep. The leaves are dying, and the grass is whispering of low skies and snow.

But it's a lovely sort of passing.

Tonight's story:

G.K. Chesterton, "The Hammer of God"

Cup XVII: 'Tis the Season to Be Crawly

Tea: Renaissance, with honey
Music: My Cocteau Twins station on Pandora

Time: Afternoon

The tea smells like peach crisp with oatmeal -- a homey, comforting smell. And, of course, nothing says "home" and "comfort" like icy, ethereal dream pop and a really good creepy story.

Yeah, I'm weird. Don't act shocked. You know better.

It's October, and the trees are stripped bare of all they wear, what do I care? (OK, Bono, out of my head, please.)

So in honor of the thinning of the walls between worlds, each day I'll post a link to a tale of the uncanny, the unearthly, the uncopyrighted.

I slacked yesterday, for which I apologize. As atonement, I'll post two links today.

Short story:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Long story:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

Enjoy. And pay no attention to that shadow.

It's nothing, really ...

Cup I: Sorting through a sort of former life

Tea: Oolong Darjeeling

Time: Late afternoon

Music: Allison Crowe, various selections: "Crayon and Ink," "Effortless," "Hallelujah," "How Long, "Immersed"

Seems a good day for solo voice and piano, this Sunday afternoon on the edge between summer and autumn, and Allison Crowe delivers the bittersweet goods. If you haven't heard her verson of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," you should. Just prepare to miss, achingly, anyone you ever loved and lost. Ever. It's available for download at her site, or watch the video here.

So, here I am in my kitchen, going through the things I hauled away from the office when I left to strike out (in the optimistic sense) on my own.

And good Lord, do I have a lot of tea. I could have started my own tea shop, I think, with the bags (large and tiny, loose and otherwise) and tins I had in my locker and my desk drawers.

Here, there's more of a storage crunch -- considering I also have a major cache in the kitchen.

And so, an idea was born: To get through the leaves, one cup per day. (Not that I'm forsaking coffee, or tea shops, or ... well, you get the idea. I'm a caffeine addict, and not inclined to 12-step that away.)

It's a discipline. But I could use a bit of that in my life. Freelance writing is going to take a lot more focus than I've known is possible, I think. And caffeine has always helped me focus.

So ... here goes.