Halloween

We walked the streets and breathed the chill air of this liminal time (when, Scandinavians thought, we're brought closest to a touching-place that connects us with the world of the dead). Hazel dressed in black-ballerina-mouse.

And we walked out into the gathering dark, beneath a cloud-cover that's been almost permanent this whole fall, except when it's lifted (and those long glorious fingers of gold and burnished October light reach east to the near-naked hills, but can't touch the dark cold shadow-bound river on its far flank). There's an unpainted old house along Main -- dozens, really -- but one that masses on its stoop a curious bounty of gargantuan beauties.

And then the forge --

And that house across the street, every year itself a big grinning warmth.