Fall
Austin awoke and fell back to sleep again tonight under the clouds; it was invigorating. It was the first noticeable cold front of the season. Please do not notice that I was taking this picture while driving.
Ford has a new piece of jewelry, the hydroxide molecule ring. Actually, it’s a small keyring with, oh, I don’t know, some sort of ball attached to it. Something like that. And I wasn’t driving when I took this picture, I was at a stoplight. Anyway, he removed it from a little chotchkie that Damon brought home, put it on his finger, and asked me what kind of molecule it looked like. Ford is into molecular models, atomic models, skeletal models. I can thank Bill Nye. Thank you, Bill Nye! You rock! Except when Ford is bouncing off the furniture at 4pm, when I am so very tired in the afternoon, proclaiming (no, shouting) that he is an electron. But it was very cute when he dissected his birthday balloons into protons and neutrons. Of course, the whole bunch of them was the nucleus. Thank you, Bill Nye!
The last of the Gayfeather is in bloom, but most has gone to seed and left to drape the new stars:… 
the grasses.
The Muscadines are ripe,
and the Beautyberries are shouting.
Katrina-Rita Donations of the Handmade Variety
Every night the past three days, as I’ve read Reeve Lindbergh’s book (beautifully illustrated by Jill McElmurry) entitled Our Nest, I’ve reflected on our health and good fortune to have each other and a home to return to each day, when we are tired and weary.
I don’t know if this blog entry will reach many people, but if you read this and have three to five hours of free time this month, I have found a wonderful way to share some skill and love with the evacuees and their children, who have very little “nest” to speak of. It’s a project called The Linus Connection and the mission is to “provide a handmade security blanket to every child who is in a crisis or at-risk situation in Central Texas.” If we are able to meet the basic needs of the evacuees, I think this would be a loving addition to the effort to help mend lives and offer warmth.
Austin’s News 8 featured this initiative a while back. To describe one benefit of the mission, founder Stephanie Sabatini offers:
“What we’re trying to do is provide security. This is something handmade that the kids know that people in the community are thinking about them, hoping for them and hoping that their lives get better perhaps than they have in the past.”
I love this bug jar block quilt. A six year-old friend of ours received one of these himself, as a gift. It’s adorable, just like this one:
