This week is a whirlwind of activity and Mercury going direct doesn’t seem to have fazed the madness of it all one little bit.

It is the last week my daughter will be at home for the summer and we’re catching up on the little things she needs for the new house she’ll be living in–a desk, a hatchet (don’t ask),  plus clothes and car inspection etc.

I am grateful the days have been somewhat cool but still hotter than I’d prefer. I like it no hotter than 75, with a real cool-down at night. Pasty pale Euro-American.

I began the grape harvest a couple of days ago and that will continue for about a week, I suspect. Not enough to do wine this year–unless I combine currants and grapes and a few elderberries for a nice rustic vintage…hm, maybe.

Friday night I’ll be at Malaprop’s talking about the little book and signing it and selling it, one hopes. I am very grateful for the chance to do a book event at this grand old store. The end of the month finds me in Sylva at City Lights and then I put my book-author hat away for a few weeks. I’ll spend that time doing some fall planting and cleaning my poor neglected house.

What is really on my mind right now is Samhain. It seems so near and the voices of the Ancestors so clear and close to my ear. I seem to feel this time of the Long Dying more keenly than usual, perhaps because of the accumulation of death that’s been floating through my world in the last couple of years. I’m sure there is a lesson there and a good one. I’ll be pondering it more closely as the months pass and we prepare for the end of the year and the Festival of the Dead.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.