Good Weather for a Warm Fire and a Good Book

Y'know how I mentioned that I had just sort of caught on that autumn had arrived? Well, yeah. I was completely caught off guard at the football game last night. At least I've finally given up shorts and flip flops but still, I only brought a sweatshirt and hat. It SNOWED on us for part of the second quarter. Icy wind. BRRRRRR! My friend Nancy took pity on me and bought me a hot chocolate to wrap my hands around. It was all worth it thought to see the scoreboard numbers finally leaning heavily in our favor. It's not that we have a bad team, it's just that up 'til now we've been playing mainly teams in a higher division than our school. Plus, it was Homecoming Game, so it was fun to see the floats and extra exitement. I found this huge pom pom in our school colors at a thrift store in Eureka last weekend. I'd planned on waving it but forget that - it made a very nice lap blanket. Necessity is the mother of invention as they say.


This deep cold was really late in coming but I knew it meant the garden would finally get touched by the frost. Today I went out to the garden and found the morning glories, tomatoes and basil most strongly hit. I'd gotten busy and sadly forgot to finish harvesting the last of things. I'm bummed about the basil but there's a bit of it that was protected enough by other overhanging plants that, if it doesn't succumb tonight, I'll try to go out and salvage tomorrow.

I did bring in the last of the tomatoes and a few sad cukes.

And these Concord Grapes which I had forgotten about. We'd eaten the few clusters off the front fence vines and something, birds I think, cleaned out my largest arbor before I got a chance to gather it myself.

So, we've covered the weather bit of the title, let's move on to the book part. I went to the library a couple of days ago and discovered that they'd extended their book sale. Yah! (Did I mention the book sale here, or only on the studio blog? I found a bunch of art books last week for a steal!) Having more time, I dug deeper into the tables of books and found some goodies. Here are the titles I bought for my shelves. I think you can read the titles if you click to enlarge the photo.

I also bought another dozen or so old children's books, mainly for collage work, but I think some of them will be worth reading as well. Even the ones I plan on using for art, not sure if I can actually bring myself to cut them up - maybe I'll just make prints off the pages I like. Most of them are from the very early 1900's. I'll show some of the beautiful old art in them over at my studio blog sometime soon.

I mentioned I'm reading The Thirteenth Tale. Ooooh. I still don't have a clue where the story is leading, but I'm loving the gothic mood of it. I'm planning to read "spooky" books for the rest of October. I think after this I'll try Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and if I can find a copy of it somewhere, Dracula. Bram Stoker, right? Or is that just the movie? And then maybe some Ann Rice. I've never read Rice. Well, I've read half of The Witching Hour, but never finished it, for a couple of reasons that had nothing to do with the book itself. I've been waiting for the right time to pick it up again, maybe now.

Those are all pretty heavy tomes. I wish I knew of some lighter Halloween themed titles. A cozy mystery perhaps or an urban fantasy that takes place in October? Anyone have any suggestions? Being busy, and with company planned for the second half of the month, honestly, I'll be lucky if I finish The Thirteenth Tale and a couple more books before the 31st.
Speaking of "how many books", I haven't mentioned my 50 Books This Year goal recently. I think I'm due for a quarterly report, yes?

I'm trying to highlight or include something spooky/Halloween/seasonal in all my posts this month. I guess spooky reads qualifies for this post. And one more thing, I found this cool garden ball (it's really a bowling ball but, shhhh, keep that between you and me) in spooky Halloween colors at the thrift store this week.

It's happy tucked in amongst the marigolds for now but when I get a chance, I'm going to perch it on something wrought iron and include it in a garden Halloween montage. Probably pumpkins. I wish the roofers hadn't accidentally thrown away my witch weather vane that was in the garden. (it was the the same color as the old shingles - I'm sure it was an accident). Well, I still have the weather vane. Just not the flying witch that was atop it. Sigh.