Obviously the heat wave of the past week has eased and my creative instincts have come out of torpor.

The photo shows my solution for repairing a favorite paintbrush that broke where the ferrule attaches to the handle. I splinted the break with two sections of a wooden skewer and taped it all together tightly. The new orange-handled fan next to it is ready in the event that the repair does not hold. That is called covering your bases.

Odorless Neutral Thin, a product of Eco House, has arrived in the mail. I washed a few canvases with a mix of the new thinner and Transparent Earth Red oil paint. We are getting ready to paint! 

A heavy gilt oval frame came out of the doll bins for a new life in its intended role; framing a piece of art. I cut some canvas board to fit, and am planning to paint a floral oil on a dark ground. This is called putting the cart before the horse.  

 My button basket got a thorough rummaging this morning as I looked for a round on which to paint a missing miniature for my elaborate antique chair. I gessoed a button of the right size.

Everything is drying and setting up preparatory to a fine painting session.

A sunflower blossom and autumn joy sedum in an antique pitcher brighten my windowsill.

When the grandkids think they are lost in the back woods I ask them if they can find our house, which looks like this from the back. Here it stands, a sprawling old farmhouse full of quirks and charms on two and a quarter acres of land. The place was built at some unknown date before 1900, and  little by little over the past thirty years we have furnished it with shabby chic  antiques from a century ago. 

 Since yesterday, The Private World of Tasha Tudor has been lying on the bed in the Grandmothers’ Room.  Tasha shared a birthday with my mother, which both would have celebrated tomorrow. In honor of the occasion the Tudor family is offering the chance to win a hand-cranked ice cream churn. Wouldn’t homemade ice cream be a delicious treat? We expect very warm days this weekend.

 The perennials rushed into bloom this summer, leading me to expect an early frost. For all these thirty years we have heated with wood. Ten cords of stacked firewood stand ready for the comning winter.  but thus far the leaves remain green and we pick high-bush blueberries every day.  The balmy weather does not stop me from collecting  new yarns and needles for the winter’s knitting, or from exploring further into Barbara Walker’s  Treasury of Knitting Patterns , anticipating quiet hours in an antique rocker near one of the woodstoves, where I plan to knit a shawl in the Rose Trellis pattern using Lorna’s Laces yarns.

Sunflowers both pale and burnished bloom along with calendula and a few late red poppies. The tree hydrangea is beginning to turn pink. Phlox blooms  both pink and apricot. Autumn Joy sedum turns  a rich deep rose. To my bouquet I add a few sprigs of goldenrod and purple nightshade and oregano gone to flower. The colors are riotous.

An image of the reflection in the water at high tide was worth the walk around the cove, past the little shack hung with lobster buoys, past the clumps of ripening rose hips. I want to paint this view, reminiscent of a castle and a moat.

I heard that the entire Harvard Library will be available online in about ten years, but I am a lover of books I can hold in my hands, especially old books. The volume pictured is tiny, just three inches wide by four and five eighths, and the gold that edges its pages is almost worn off. The title is Forget-Me-Not; or the Philipena, by Mrs. Lunt. Date of publication is 1848.

Emma of Nana’s Nook returned from the Fryeburg Fair and opened up her shop for me this afternoon so I could buy the white soup tureen. I  am imagining it filled with Butternut Squash Soup at the Thanksgiving table.

I began  this soup with chopped onions browned with butter until golden  in the black iron frying pan. I sauted sliced leeks and added the onions and leeks to the soup pot where vegetable bouillion simmered. Into the pot went a small white turnip, a parsnip, a carrot, a beet, a handful of green beans, winter squash, mushrooms, celery, and sweet red pepper, all diced into small pieces. I finished with a generous sprinkling of dried oregano, tomato sauce, chowder fish, and a small amount of pasta noodles. About an hour later we enjoyed the savory result, served in my new English Abbey serving bowl with lid.

I wonder what was last served in this dish, and how long ago!

Remembering the antique soup tureen my mother bought when we vacationed at the Cape in 1950, (it had only the tiniest chip,) I wanted a large white soup tureen from Nana’s  Nook but she has gone off to camp at the Fryeburg Fair for a week. This charming little English tureen I chose instead at the Sabattus Antiques Mall will more than suffice for now and I’ll see Nana next week. Maybe for Thanksgiving I’ll serve a butternut squash soup with a dollop of stewed cranberries. I enjoy the gentility of it,  ladling up soup from a handsome container set directly on the dinner table.