Book of Days

Lots going on these days! It was Seth’s birthday on the last of September and then we segued right into my mom’s 90th birthday at the start of October, so it was, oh, nonstop celebration all weekend. Then at work on Monday I walked in to learn that there had been a water leak all weekend; by the time the water mitigation crew left for the day on Monday night, their amazing vacuum equipment had sucked over 300 gallons of water out from under the bamboo floorboards. The drying-out process will continue for at least another week. And still that same day we learnt that the forecast track for Hurricane Matthew was beginning to suggest that he had us squarely in his sight. And so Tuesday at work we prepared for the storm, and Wednesday we prepared the home of an old family friend. Thursday morning we will prepare ours, and then we will wait.

This is all to say I’m sorry, but I am just now getting around to letting you know that your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for October 2016 is posted to our website. It is a printable PDF, ready to print on standard US Letter size paper, and a great companion to the Convivio Book of Days Blog. Cover stars this month: pumpkins photographed just last week, before all the madness began, at our friends Leif and Jeffrey’s home––these green pumpkins are from last year’s harvest! They’re still looking beautiful. And any friend of pumpkins is a friend of mine.

Over at the Convivio Book of Days Catalog, we are trying something new: we’ve operated for years under a flat $8 shipping fee policy, but now if you spend $50 at the Convivio Book of Days catalog, you’ll get free shipping. Magic words, aren’t they? FREE SHIPPING. I love them, too. We’ve also figured out a way for folks outside the US to order (you’ll see a flat $30 shipping charge on your invoice, but we will contact you with the actual shipping rate before we ship or charge your card and will adjust the charge accordingly… most likely your actual shipping charge will be less), so that, too, is something new.

Also new are lots of new items added to the catalog––mostly handcrafts from San Miguel de Allende for your Day of the Dead and Halloween celebrations but also lovely screen printed tea towels for cider season. (Speaking of cider: don’t forget the Shaker mulling spices.) We’ve also added about a dozen new German advent calendars this week, too, and as long as we have power during the storm, I’ll work on adding some new Christmas and letterpress items, too. Right after I bake a batch of granola for Seth.

Pretty soon we will have reached the point where we have done all we can to prepare, and we will take shelter. There seems to be, at least here in Lake Worth, no need for evacuations, so we plan to stay put, Seth and me and Haden the Convivio Shopcat. We will watch the wind and rain from the shelter of this old house. The house is wood, cedar and old Dade pine, tough as nails, but it will creak and moan a lot, especially as we get into the thick of things, and there will be times when things will get a little scary. We know this; we’ve done it before. We’ll be okay, we all will be, you, too.

Now go on: get shopping. Spend 50 bucks, make us pay for that shipping. We promise to take good care and to not send anything out until the rain has passed. Happy October.

Grassy Waters Preserve is a natural wetlands ecosystem not far from where we live. It serves as the freshwater supply for West Palm Beach, but it also serves as a place where one can experience Florida’s great big sky, a place where the big sky is reflected in water below. Seth was out there for work one day recently; while he was there, he took the photograph that is the cover star for your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for September. The calendar is our monthly gift to you, a good companion to this blog, one that you can print on standard US letter size paper and pin to your bulletin board or stick on the refrigerator door, reminding you of the ceremony of a day.

This is what our sky often looks like this time of year, and for those who say we have no seasons I would counter with the notion that this is a September sky, a hold out from our summer skies, and it looks nothing like our winter skies. Summer holds on for a while longer here than in other places. Our seasonal shifts are subtle.

It is, nonetheless, a month of seasonal shifting: Autumn arrives by the almanac, this year on the 22nd. There are days that are weather markers: Matthew’s Day, bright and clear / Brings good wine in the next year is the general thought on St. Matthew’s Day, just before that day of equinox. It is a month of balance: day and night will be pretty much equal come that third week, but the balance is ephemeral; the planet keeps shifting in its seat and we enter the darker time of year here in the Northern Hemisphere. Even that sky will shift: Come October, we’ll see a lot fewer days that look like that.

Shifting planets and skies you can view by looking down as much as you can by looking up? Wonderful stuff. I wish you a month of wonder, too.

Our gift to you each month is a printable calendar to accompany this blog; here now is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for August. And lest you think a good deal of planning goes into these calendars, this month’s calendar will dispel any suggestion of that: the photos for the calendar were taken just last week while we were vacationing in Maine.

We miss Maine but we are back to our regular routines. The sun is strong and the humidity is high and we keep hoping it will rain but it doesn’t. My garden survived my absence, though the okra got woody and the sunflowers are looking bedraggled. It is that time of summer where a bit of delirium begins setting in. It was nice to have a break of cooler New England weather, but we realize now a bit of a tactical error: there is still so much of a Florida summer yet to be endured.

Be that as it may, Lammas, today, reminds us that summer is indeed waning. Even here in this land where summer is king. It is, as well, the month of Obon, the traditional Japanese festival honoring the dead, and it is the month of the Assumption, which gave my grandmother Assunta her name. It is the month of cakes 21 feet tall and of St. Augustine, patron saint of brewers, and of St. Bartholomew, patron saint of bookbinders and book artists, whose day brings the traditional Printers’ Wayzgoose. And we begin to realize that autumn is on its way.