ed the season this weekend by cleaning and rearranging the living room. E and Z have been asking for ages to "rerrange the riveryroom" and the turn of season seemed like as good a time as any to get dust out of the corners and change the view. E helped me dust and vacuum and move furniture and then I gave the boys free artistic control over setting up the Nature Table.
They seem to favor the well-populated look. Hiding in there somewhere is this sweet woodland animal set from Anne Moze that I couldn't resist buying a while back and tucking away for the autumn (you can see the hedgehog as half of the chimera M put together).
We also brought out our fall book basket (some of our favorites: Fall Leaves Fall; Child of Faerie, Child of Earth; Hist Whist; Flower Faeries of the Autumn (OK, that's my favorite, not the boys'); Stone Wall Secrets; Woody Hazel and Little Pip; The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin; You and Me Little Bear).
For dinner we made an autumn feast of vegetable soup, pain d'epi and a rustic apple tart. I usually make pumpkin soup for the first day of fall, and had even bought a ridiculously overpriced buttercup squash at the health food store for the purpose (our winter squashes are still hanging out on the vine in the hopes of gaining in size or ripeness), but our cornucopia runneth over with green beans, tomatoes, broccoli, and potatoes just now, so I made a more harvest-appropriate soup with all of the above plus some carrots from neighbor's garden.
I was reading a book the other day about Celtic festivals, which said that the Celts celebrated the beginning of the harvest in early August (Lughnasa) and the end of the agricultural year around October 31 (Samhain), but did not do much to mark the autumn equinox because they were too busy harvesting and storing away the year's crops. I think I can relate; truly I never thought I'd say this, but I'm looking forward to the end of tomato season--C harvested all of our own this weekend starting up more rounds of baking, skinning, blending and freezing.
wow - what an autumn feast. Looks lovely.
ReplyDeleteI've always paid more attention to the spring equinox than the autumn. Maybe because there seems to be more to celebrate as the warmer weather and longer days approach.
So nice!
ReplyDeleteWe didn't really do anything for the Equinox, per se, being all busy with school and such, but this past weekend we pulled out the autumn decorations and books and put away the summer nature table decorations and started to decorate the nature table for fall.
lovely pics andrea! looks like you guys are settling nicely into fall ~
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