Saturday at the Pumpkin Patch

“You cannot share your life with a dog or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and feelings.” – Jane Goodall

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“Those sure are great pumpkins, Mom!” — Piper

Door County - Autumn 2022

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” - Emily Brontë

A long weekend in Door County in October — steaming coffee and cardamom rolls from Fika in the morning; long walks in the woods to enjoy the fall colors and crisp air; wine on the deck at sunset; tart apples from Woods and cider from Island Orchard; meals at SBYC, Chives, and Trixie's; visting with friends and family —exactly what I needed.

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Fall Colors in Door County 2021

“The trees are in their autumn beauty; The woodland paths are dry; Under the October twilight the water mirrors a still sky.” — William Butler Yeats

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“It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time to not know anything about it. I had never been to Wisconsin, but all my life I had heard about it, had eaten its cheeses, some of them as good as any in the world. And I must have seen pictures. Everyone must have. Why then was I unprepared for the beauty of this region, for its variety of field and hill, forest, lake? I think now I must have considered it one big level cow pasture because of the state's enormous yield of milk products. I never saw a country that changed so rapidly, and because I had not expected it everything I saw brought a delight. I don't know how it is in other seasons, the summers may reek and rock with heat, the winters may groan with dismal cold, but when I saw it for the first and only time in early October, the air was rich with butter-colored sunlight, not fuzzy but crisp and clear so that every frost-gay tree was set off, the rising hills were not compounded, but alone and separate. There was a penetration of the light into the solid substance so that I seemed to see into things, deep in…I remembered that I had been told Wisconsin is a lovely state, but the telling had not prepared me. It was a magic day. The land dripped with richness, the fat cows and pigs gleaming against green, and, in the smaller holdings, corn standing in little tents as corn should, and pumpkins all about…Beside the road I saw a very large establishment, the greatest distributor of sea shells in the world--and this in Wisconsin, which hasn't known a sea since pre-Cambrian time. But Wisconsin is loaded with surprises. I had heard of Wisconsin but was not prepared for the weird country sculpted by the Ice Age, a strange, gleaming country of water and carved rock, black and green. To awaken here might make one believe it a dream of some other planet, for it has a non-earthly quality, or else the engraved record of a time when the world was much younger and much different…” — John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley (1962)

Fall Colors in Door County 2020

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” — Albert Camus

Links I Love • October 2019

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, (s)he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” - John Muir

• 21 French-Inspired Halloween Costumes - très amusant — especially “French Kiss”

• 31 Spooky (But Not Too Scary) Books for Your Fall Reading List - I didn’t think this was my genre, but I’ve read and enjoyed 12 of the classics and am working on the Inspector Gamache series.

• 15 Amazing Books That Inspire Us to Travel - including my favorite, Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast

• 36 Hours in Milwaukee - a New York Times tour of my hometown

• 14 Thoughts Everyone Has While Learning French - Even after almost 40 years, I still struggle with some of these concepts.

• 11 French Expressions That Have No English Equivalent

• The Ultimate Guide to Visiting Paris - Time to start planning my next trip?!

• The 6 Best Shopping Streets in Paris - I concur :)

• Climate Change is Changing the Flavor of French Wine

• Top 10 French Movies on Netflix - I’ve only seen 4 of them.

• 13 TV Shows and Movies to Inspire your Love of French Cooking - or eating!

• You Can Rent the Villa From Under the Tuscan Sun - I love that movie!

• The Best Advent Calendars for 2019 - The Diptyque calendar is amazing — for $425!)

• What to Wear with a Turtleneck - This is one of my go-to winter uniforms. Hey, if it was good enough for Audrey…

• Looking ahead to 2020, here are some great Photography Project Ideas

Weekend in NYC: Central Park

“I recall Central Park in Fall…” - Wayne Newton, Danke schoen