Catskills Weekend

looking down the driveway

My weekend was mostly work--cleaning out the store.

 Many things to the thrift store, others to sell on Etsy, to keep, to give as gifts. 

 But there were autumn leaves, everywhere.

Morning coffee by the waterfall.

A visit to a customer to see the soapstone counters in her kitchen. 

This magnificent barn is on her property.

Her charming yellow farmhouse in the distance.

Her pond, thick with water lilies,

 where she holds skating parties in the winter.

Why the sudden interest in soapstone? I'm saying goodbye to the world's ugliest kitchen. Every surface covered with laminate the color of Silly Putty. Tiles the color of Silly Putty, walls and molding the color of Silly Putty. After ten years of this (granted, only on weekends) we are treating ourselves to a new kitchen.

Soon the hammock will come down, and winter will be in sight. 

                                          Autumn

     The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

     as if orchards were dying high in space.

     Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no".

     And tonight the heavy earth is falling,

     away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

     We're all falling. This hand here is falling.

     And look at the other one ... It's in them all.

     And yet there is Someone, whose hands

     infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.

                               -Rainier Marie Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)