A chilly morning, 38 degrees, and the furnace is rumbling. I haven't turned it on much this fall. The nights have been mild enough, and the wood stove powerful enough, to keep us heated. But that's a temporary condition. Winter is around the corner, and I've already woken up with nightmares about Christmas shopping.

We haven't had a frost yet, but the garden is very tired, and the recent rains took the vim out of most of the remaining flowers. So yesterday I dug up dahlia roots, tore out the scarlet runner, cut down the peony, and prepped the Lantern Waste bed for winter.

I did revise a poem, and I'll spend more time with it today. I don't love it yet but maybe I'll learn to. I also managed to convince myself to submit to a couple of journals, and packed dried herbs into jars, and made chicken stock for the freezer, and had a long phone conversation with a son about playwriting. All in all, it was an interesting, non-money-earning day.

So today, while I'm waiting for editing files from an author, I'll tackle the Parlor and Library beds and work a little more on my wood-sawing project. I'll put together a syllabus for next week's Monson class. I'll peck away at the poem revision and read another chunk of Suite Francaise. I might copy out some Dante. Possibly I might get the violin out of its case or go mushroom hunting. I'm hoping to visit with some central-Maine-diaspora friends. I'll probably go out to the salon to write tonight.

Mid-October, in the little northern city by the sea: newly bare branches framing a white steeple; flutter-flocks of migrating songbirds; honey mushrooms hidden under the backyard leaves; golden marigolds blooming among the leeks; children scuffling home from school; the cat blinking luxuriously in an afternoon sunny spot; a wood fire lit by late afternoon; low, slanting daylight; socks and jackets and work gloves; the sky a glorious cerulean blue; the sky invisible under fog.

It is sweet here, and mostly I think of it as home.