Saturday Market

From the Saturday Market:
-fingerling potatoes
-yellow onions
-jonagold and mutsu (also known as crispin) apples
-leeks
-goat feta (DELICIOUS)

Last night, Anna and Robert and I went to see Le Vent du Nord down at 1 Longfellow Square, and they were SO much fun. Québécois music played very enthusiastically on hurdy-gurdy, fiddle, guitar, keyboard, accordion, and sung all in French . . . and the musicians all had adorable French Canadian accents when they spoke between songs. (I feel certain there's a joke somewhere in there about men who speak French and have mastery over their instruments . . . )

And now I'm cooking up a batch of manoomin so that I can have approximately anodyne oatmeal for breakfast, and having a big cup of tea while I wait.

Market Day

A nice browse through the farmers' market in the sunshine this morning restored my spirits, and made me determined, in spite of my disappointment with how the vote in Maine turned out, to help with whatever the next step is, and, in the meantime, to put as much love and hope out into the world as I can.

From the market:
-mutsu and jonagold apples
-maple syrup
-carrots
-kale
-parsley
-garlic

And a poem for November:

A Pair of Barn Owls, Hunting

Now slowly, smoothly flying over the field
Beside the orchard into the after-light
Of the cold evening, the ash gold owls come sailing
Close to the branches, gliding across the arbor
Where the bare grapevines ripen only shadows
In the dead of winter, and at the end of a garden
Suddenly flare their wings, hover,
And swerve, claws first, down to the grass together.

—David Wagoner

:(

Oh Maine! I'm so disappointed.

Saturday Market

It's a warm, gray, damp, windy day—we walked down to the park for the farmers' market, where all the trees were coppery.

From the Saturday market:
-leeks
-yellow onions
-shallots
-garlic
-mini pumpkins for decoration
-jonagold, northern spy, and a big green heirloom winter apple that I can't remember the name of

Ooooo, the sun's trying to peek out!

Happy Halloween!

Market Day

From the market today:
-yellow onions
-jona gold apples
-fingerling potatoes

It's a gray day today, chilly and threatening rain. And I think a secret signal must have gone out through the tree network, because all the bright leaves seem to be falling today. After skipping last week (feeling oogy and under the weather), I am looking forward to yoga again tonight after work . . . and then maybe, if I'm lucky, there will be a shiny treat from etsy waiting from me when I get home.

Sunny Sunday

After a gray, rainy, foggy day yesterday (too wet to walk down to the farmers' market, even), today the sun came out again.

Market Day

From the market today:
-fingerling potatoes
-organic, free-range eggs
-spinach
-garlic
-wee posy of dried flowers

Fallish

A little fallish inspiration and decoration around my house (and neighborhood):



some adorable fuzzy felted acorns from lil fish studios,



a skein of sock yarn in beautiful "lemon curd" from Oxford Kitchen Yarns,





and some bright leaves on sunny Saturday morning.

Market Day

From the Saturday market:
-yogurt
-gala apples
-yellow onion
-organic cranberries
-leeks
-sweet potatoes
-bouquet of flowers

Cloudy Twilight

It was a cold, cloudy twilight walk home through Portland tonight—a nice transition from the workweek to the weekend.

How do you fit time for creative things into a busy routine filled with day-to-day things that have to get done? How do you carve out some mental and spiritual creative space and give yourself a chance to find inspiration and follow through on it? These are the questions I've been asking myself this week . . .

In the meantime, tiny shop update with a couple of new prints tonight, including Late Afternoon.

Good Listening

For anyone who has young children, or who, like me, just appreciates children's literature, I highly recommend the new Winnie-the-Pooh book, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, in which Christopher Robin spends his summer vacation having all new adventures with Pooh and everyone else. It feels very true to the original stories, and it's utterly charming, especially the audio version narrated by Jim Dale. Your kids will want to have their own spelling bee, or throw a harvest fête, or maybe just bounce around and eat a lot of honey.

Towhee

When I was looking up my long pie pumpkin yesterday, I discovered it's also known as a Nantucket pumpkin. I also discovered that it's apparently not ready to eat until it's completely orange, which means that the squash soup I'd planned to make with it will be delayed. (My newest tweak to the squash soup, besides learning that it's just as good with acorn squash as with butternut, hence wanting to try it with pumpkin, is to top it with a dollop of my new favorite Silvery Moon Creamery yogurt and some toasted, sea-salted pumpkin seeds. YUM.)

I saw an eastern towhee (which I still think of as a rufus-sided towhee, thank you Roger Tory Peterson) while I was walking the dog this morning. It was in a crowd of white-crowned sparrows and juncos, and we followed them all the way down the Prom.

Market Day

Gosh, the cold has roared in! It's beautiful and crisp and chilly (the chilly makes it hard to get out of bed, which is outfitted with two duvets plus hot water bottle, but the beautiful (mostly) makes up for it)—there were leaves that were glowing an impossible red in the sun this morning when the dog and I were out. And the farmers' market was overflowing with squashes and apples, carrots and potatoes, cider and cranberries, and the last few vestiges of summer things, corn and tomatoes and blueberries. I came back with a haul:

-long pie pumpkin
-yellow onions
-jonagold apples
-spinach
-garlic
-green cauliflower

I'm hoping to update the shop at the end of this week with a bunch of fallish prints, so stay tuned!

Plummy

Plum butter yesterday was a big success! I have five wee jars of it, and while I am feeling very possessive of all of them at the moment, I'm sure I'll end up giving some away. (The cranberries appeared at the farmers' market on Saturday, which means that soon I'll buy up a bunch and make more delicious cranberry jam.) There's something really magical about glass canning jars, isn't there? Something about all their history, I think.

Meanwhile, I have veggie stock bubbling on the stove so that I can make potato leek soup for dinner, and Scary Bugger (the garden spider who has taken up residence outside one of my front windows this fall) is doing lots of very impressive spider acrobatics while she (he?) rebuilds her web.

New Beginnings!

It's been a beautiful fall weekend here, and between breezy dog walks and holing up in the kitchen (five wee jars of plum butter! wonderful apple cake!), I opened a shop on etsy to sell prints of some of my photos! Deep breath! I'm scared and excited all at the same time. To new things!

http://littorina.etsy.com

Squash Hat

A hat that looks like a squash, or maybe a hat FOR a squash . . . squash hat!

Market Day

From the Saturday market:
-fresh cheddar curd
-yogurt
-northern spy apples
-leeks
-potatoes
-shallots
-carrots
-blueberries
-raspberries
-yellow onions
-bunch of flowers