Today, it worked

Chinaberry tree attempting some autumn color.

Ever have days when you realize you never should have gotten out of bed or left your house? Of course; we all do, right? But sometimes we don't appreciate the corollary to those days, which are the days when everything just magically works. I had one of those days today.

Another attempt.

To begin with, autumn has finally started to show her colors, along with cooler temperatures (if you consider 80 degrees to be cooler, that is), which is generally a huge help in helping revive my general mood after our endless, brown summer. We have color in the vineyard (I'm going to do a whole post on that in a few days with pics) and color around the property.

These Gazanias definitely have the right idea!

This is also the time of year when spring comes, meaning the hillsides start to green up again. Think I'm kidding?  Check it out.

So yes, this is how things generally go. Things green up in fall, once we get a little rain. Autumn colors set in, peaking between Thanksgiving and Christmas (while the hills are simultaneously greening up, go figure). Then in late January, the trees all start to blossom. 

Autumn: time to green up. These seedlings will be three feet tall by April.

I know; it's extremely weird and only a shade stranger than Australians and Argentinians having Christmas dinner in the heat of summer and spending the "summer" solstice bundled up in front of the fire. We get an autumn-spring and then a full-on spring a couple of months later. And then 8 months of summer. Some people love it, some hate it, but it is what it is.

Most of the time I have severe autumn and winter envy towards those in colder climes, but maybe it's more productive to just be grateful that I'm not covered in sweat and flies by 10 a.m. anymore. It's the little things.

Stephen Andrew even knows how to make packaging beautiful.

But today was great for other reasons as well. I caught the mail lady in the nick of time and managed to snag a package I've been trying to get for a couple of days, from my dear friend Stephen Andrew. It was some amazing artisanal honey from his home state! And it was AMAZING, that is not a gratuitous exaggeration. I even thought about taking some out to the beehive to let my bees see what kind of quality they should be aiming for in terms of flavor. Thank you Stephen Andrew! 

Speaking of the bees, "my" hive finally vacated the fountain and got into the bee box. This was a torturous, long process which consisted of me donning a beekeeper's suit every day and blocking off all their newly created avenues into the fountain until they finally gave up and just moved next door to the box.  Major win for me. 

Bees in the box.

So I got honey in the mail, I got bees where bees are supposed to be, and our land deal closed, so we now own 2.5 more acres next door to us. And stinking daylight savings time ends Sunday, so mornings will be light again! 

All good reasons to get out of bed.