The holiday brought a stop to normal rhythms of the house with girls home, in and out at all times of the day. This morning the local grocer asked about them, both former clerks of his. He remarked on all the activity brought in with everyone coming back home. "Hubbub" he called it. Now it's quiet again.

Pots are finally stacked on shelves, containers emptied, drying rack hung in the rafters, and the last seeds collected. Catalogs are pouring in with new offerings and I have no energy to look through them at this point. A few weeks of winter will take care of that.

The Autumn Fern in the shade bed adjacent to the woods is thriving. It loves the angle of the afternoon sun at this time of the year.

In the cold frame the aeonium is producing tiny offshoots. I picked sage, thyme and parsley for roast chicken on Sunday and today it looks like they were never touched. And two more calendula seedlings have germinated.

We've had too much rain and too many clouds lately. A day like today with sun shining from daybreak all the way into late afternoon is a gift. It makes the cold tolerable and the email correspondences from a contact attending a conference in Phoenix slightly more bearable.