Monday Musings No. 234 | Summer’s Last Hurrah

A wild storm, a pumpkin candle already lit, Christmas in September, and a Paris novel I could not put down.

It is Labor Day, summer last hurrah. The pumpkin candle is already lit and I have zero regrets.

The weekend was busy but fun, with a wild storm thrown into the mix. We had been away the weekend before, so we came home to yard work that needed doing before the rain arrived. Two hours of picking up pinecones and sticks, and then the storm rolled in and made a new and bigger mess. Those long-leaf pines in the yard (all thirty or so of them) were swaying in the wind in a way that made my stomach drop. Ever since the tree fell on the house two years ago, wild weather is not something I take lightly. I stood at the window watching them and I will be honest with you, I was praying.

We are all fine. That is the good news and the most important news. The bad news is that the storm left a mess bigger than when the hurricane bands came through last year. A roofer is coming this week to assess the damage from the falling branches and a leak that has appeared in the hallway. It is always something. But everyone is safe, the dogs are fine, and everything else can be cleaned up and fixed.

This afternoon we were headed to a barbecue and a little time at the pool, which feels like a nice way to close out summer.. What about you? What are your plans?

Speaking of closing things out: I saw a Christmas commercial on television yesterday. In September!. I will pause to let that land. I love Christmas and even I raised an eyebrow. Anyone else?

As for fall, I am fully ready. The pumpkin candle has been lit. I have already made pumpkin bread and pumpkin bars, and I am in the middle of experimenting with apples and pumpkin for Sweet Treats for Your Sweet Tooth with Sheri at the end of the month. More on that soon.

What I Watched

Pour yourself a second cup for this one. I have been watching slow-living videos when I need a little quiet and this one, a day in the Cotswolds, is one of my favorites. It follows a walk through Bibury, one of those honey-coloured stone villages that looks as though someone dreamed it up, through the first signs of early autumn arriving in the hedgerows. From there it moves inside to a cozy tea ritual with a cat, a visit to a local farm shop, and then an evening of baking from scratch by candlelight. The whole thing ends with homemade bread and a warm cup of tea. If you have ever imagined life in an English cottage (and I think most of us here have), this video is the next best thing to actually being there.

What I Read

The Girl Who Reads on the Metro is the kind of book that makes you want to get lost on purpose. Juliette has a perfectly ordinary life in Paris: a slow office job, a string of not-quite-right men, a low-grade melancholy she has learned to carry. The only bright spots in her day are her metro rides across the city, where she watches strangers reading and invents entire lives for them. Then one morning she wanders off her usual path and stumbles through a rusty gate wedged open with a book, into the world of an eccentric bookseller named Soliman and his young daughter. Before she knows what has happened, she has agreed to become a passeur: someone hired to take stacks of used books out into the city and find them their rightful readers, using nothing but imagination and instinct. Big-hearted, funny, and entirely its own thing, this is a book about what happens when you finally let your daydreaming become your real life.

TJ Maxx Fall Finds

Instead of an outfit today I thought I would share this weeks favorites from TJMaxx. Cashmere sweaters, candles, leather gloves, and bags. I ordered this wine colored leather bag, I think it is a great color for Fall.

If you missed Weekend Meanderings this week, Kim, Juliet, and I had lots to share.

I hope wherever you are, whatever your Labor Day looks like, you find at least one good hour in it. A good meal, a good conversation, a good book, a moment when you thought: yes, this is summer doing its best work on the way out the door. Fall will be here before we know it, and I for one am ready. The pumpkin candle is proof.

Tell me: are you firmly in the fall camp by now, or are you holding on to summer just a little longer? And did anyone else spot Christmas before September was five minutes old? Leave a note in the comments. 

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