L'Automne Vive!

Today was the most beautiful autumn day that I have just about ever seen. It was brilliantly sunny and clear, around 65-70 degrees all day--just perfect for a light cardigan--and the colours were all freshened and brightened up from yesterday's rains. I enjoyed some lounging about on the North Lawn, reading The Poetics of Natural History, and feasting on a sack lunch of first-crop California almonds (thank you, Grandpapa and Grandmama!), figs, radishes, clementines, ginger-lemon cookies, and a petite peanut-butter-and-strawberry-peach-jam sandwich. I sipped oolong from the TeaHaus (don't you just love it when you can pay for something entirely in coins? It makes me feel one part starving artist and one part Regency maiden...) and reclined at a pic-nic table to enjoy my reading. I've finished the first essay, on father-and-son naturalist duo John and William Bartram, who lived in the Eastern US during the later half of the eighteenth century. I daresay this book is a fantastic read, and turning out to be a perfect source for my Photography conference paper on scientific illustration and photography.

Anyhow, I must say I indulged myself once again with the foliage through my lens, so here are a few more photographs--





Here's the leftover compost of my lunch:

Overall, a lovely afternoon.

Jamie and I went to see Bright Star at the Bronxville Clearview Cinemas last night. It was an indulgently beautiful film, one which entranced me from the opening close-up of a needle and thread weaving carefully in and out of a sheet of fabric. Bring hankies, ladies (and gentlemen). It's lovely, but tragic...