October Adventures, Playing Catch Up, Art Gallery Openings, and Autumn Downtime

Pumpkin Patch, Woodinville, with scarecrow

October Adventures

It’s been shockingly beautiful, cool and sunny. We entered October a bit worn out, honestly, so besides playing catch up from a month of illness and hospital trips, we decided to try to spend some time taking advantage of the good things going on around us. This shot was taken at the local farm stand that we get our apples, squash, and hatch chilies (!) from, with sunflowers, scarecrow, and pumpkin patch (if you squint you might be able to see Mt Rainier in the background too.)

My neighborhood is truly pretty ideal for autumn downtime. I even got Glenn to stop in a local winery and do a teensy bit of wine tasting! These shots of the dahlia garden at Matthews Winery.  And Glenn used some gorgeous delicata pink squash and local apples to make this ginger-maple pumpkin-apple bread. Perfect for the slightly chilly nights we’ve been having. And we got the chance to see the Chateau St. Michelle peacocks again, too, along with swarms of Canadian geese eating the grapes off the decorative vines in front of the winery.

Roq La Rue Re-Opens

There were a lot of wonderful things going on this week but one of them was the re-opening, after two years, of pop-goth-surrealist art gallery Roq La Rue. Glenn and I got dressed up and made our way downtown, checked out the art, and then went to some cool shops and a boutique ice cream shop, Salt & Straw, where Glenn tried their strawberry balsamic black pepper. The people watching at Roq La Rue, on top of the art, is fantastic, but it’s almost like Comic-Con in that no matter how I dress, I’m always a little bit underdressed. I almost came home with a very Halloween-appropriate black cat lamp with light beams coming out of his eyes. I tried to get a pic of us dressed up before we left because it’s so rare and the two of us dress up for an outing any more! Anyway, I was very happy one of my favorite Seattle art galleries is back.

Heartbreaking Storms and Climate Changes and Mid-terms

It was heart-breaking watching Hurricane Michael hit the East coast. My thoughts are with all the victims who are still struggling to get power and get rid of debris. There was also a very apocalyptic climate change report this week to remind us that things are not normal, and more violent hurricanes are supposed to be coming more frequently. With an administration rolling back protections for air, water, and radioactive pollution, remember to vote (and make sure you are registered to vote) in the midterms as more is at stake than just our present problems, but future problems caused by this government’s reckless behavior. (By the way, the most hilarious (and heart-stopping) thing for me as a science person on the new EPA web site is that “a small amount of radiation can be good for you, sort of like exercise.” This is absolutely 100 false balderdash, FYI. There is no end to the lies this government will push on its unsuspecting audience.)

Playing Catch-Up

I was also determined, since I lost a little over a month of writing and submitting time, to get back on track, so I sent out a couple of submissions, but I notice that the way my brain functions since the MS, I’m a little slower putting together submissions, making sure I’m following the guidelines of different journals…what used to take twenty minutes takes more than two hours now. My reading times have also slowed, although my vision didn’t get worse – it just takes my brain longer to process a poem, a page of prose. I should send my book manuscript out some more as well. I had to catch up on e-mails and phone calls, too. If I owe you something, a blurb or an e-mail, please send me a note to remind me. It’s also possible I’ve lost a lot of time watching Rita Hayworth movie marathons, planting things, watching hummingbirds and flickers and woodpeckers fight around my back deck, scanning Netflix for Halloween-appropriate programming, and well, just sleeping. I’m still waiting to get my “bounce” back, to get through the stack of books by the bed. My legs are still a little weak (I can now stand for a grand total of fifteen minutes at a time) so I’m taking short walks each day that I can to build them back up before the rainy season is upon us…which will probably be upon us sooner rather than latre. In the meantime, please go out and enjoy as much sunshine, leaf-turning, dahlia-strewn birdwatching as you can. Autumn downtime seems so decadent, to me – a time supposed to be a flurry of business, returning to school, coming back from vacation, paying bills, rearranging closets to reach coats and scarves and boots – but it feels the most necessary, too – extra sleep, extra vitamins, extra consumption of pumpkin and apple. It seems like good poetry-writing time. My own recent poems, I notice, have been full of death and dahlias.