I know it’s fall in a lot of other places in the northern hemisphere this time of year. But we don’t usually see evidence of it here in Southern California until later, toward the end of October. My mom used to say that Halloween was usually when we had to start wearing sweaters outside at night, and that’s always worked for me. October (my birth month) tends to be marked by Santa Ana winds or just plain heat waves, and a couple of years ago I spent a sweltering birthday stressing over wildfires, then got evacuated.

This year we’re getting a normal (for other places) autumn, with beautiful cool weather, a few clouds, and no need for air conditioning or shorts. I keep looking at the weather forecast to see when the heat will return, but so far it’s staying away, with at least a week more of blissful autumn predicted. It’s a little disorienting, but I love it.

Autumn is my favorite season. Real autumn, like you have in other places. I’ve always hankered for the sort of autumn they get in New England with those fiery brilliant leaves. But I’ll definitely settle for this. I’m grateful to the weather gods at the moment, and I don’t want to push it, but . . . now if we could just get some much needed rain.

We’ve had temperatures at or near 100F for three days now. I say “at or near” because it hasn’t quite hit three digits at our house but has very nearby. We happen to be on a hillside that catches just a tad more breeze than some other parts of this little town.

It’s been a good Saturday to spend indoors watching DVDs, even though there was work to do in the yard. (Yeah, right.) Right now I’m watching “The Kid” again and wondering why Lily Tomlin hasn’t made more movies. She’s the best part of this one.

We’ve been lucky, with fairly bearable weather most of the summer until now, so I don’t have all that much to complain about — provided this heatwave ends soon. Please?

I’ve been meaning to blog about our new family member, Raven. I wanted to wait until I’d uploaded some decent pictures of him, and he’s a bit camera shy. At first he was shy of us, and the camera was just a big scary eye staring at him. He ran every time he saw it for the first couple of weeks. Here he is at last, relaxing. (Click on thumbnails for larger views.)
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Piano cat wants to play. (Click on photos for larger views.)

Let’s see, this note is … here …

Darn humans with cameras! I’m outta here.

You can read my article, “The Interdependent Language of Tarot,” in this month’s Newsletter issue #77 of the Association for Tarot Studies.

A cat or a dog?

I have never thought dogs are smarter than cats, but according to a study described in The Guardian, Cats outsmarted in psychologist’s test, they are, at least in some ways. I’m not quite convinced, since I don’t fully understand the test myself. Either I need a better description or the dogs in the study are smarter than I am as well. What I found most entertaining about the article was the comments. We will defend our pets to the bitter end! I love both dogs and cats, and I’m not sure why humans feel a need to take sides as dog people or cat people. Frankly, I don’t care which are smarter, cats or dogs. Members of both species seem to know quite a bit about friendship, and have something to teach us humans….

So maybe the question should be: Which are smarter, cats, dogs, or people?

as a good war. Soldiers die, civilians die. Too many deaths. Why? How does this prevent terrorism? Stop it already.

No, you haven’t landed on the wrong blog. Though I usually only post about Tarot on my other blog, Spirit Blooms, in honor of World Tarot Day, I’d like to share my love of Tarot a bit more broadly, and also to honor some of the people of Tarot, including writers and artists that I think are rather special.

By the way, I understand that today is also World Towel Day for Arthur Dent fans (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). (more…)

flitting from flower to flower, exulting in the color, shape, and scent of spring. Each one is more beautiful than the last. I needed to worship someone for making flowers, so I looked up Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and found some amazing artwork to worship as well. (Uh-oh — she’s worshiping graven images!)

From Botticelli to Rembrandt, many people before me have felt driven to seek out a higher power responsible for flowers, and to give thanks. Rembrandt painted his Floras as plump women who appear pregnant. Others have painted her with one bare breast. Always she’s surrounded by or bedecked with flowers.

Botticelli’s Flora (above) looks a bit gaunt to me, and worried. Does she fear Mellona will be late sending the bees this year? (Mellona was the Romans’ name for the protector of bees.) Flora needn’t worry if she’s in my neighborhood. The bees are out in force, ecstatically worshiping flowers all over the place.

Note: The photo of the bee is by Jon Sullivan and made available by him to the public domain via PD Photo.org. Thank you, Jon! Thanks to Wikipedia, too.

click to enlarge

Our home office is in the second bedroom, where we’ve removed the closet doors and added storage shelves. As soon as she was big enough to jump that high, Tara began insisting that one particular spot, on a shelf at about my eye level, was hers. She started pushing things out of the way, and wouldn’t leave it alone. Finally I gave in and cleared a space for her. (The shelf doesn’t really sag, that’s a trick of the lens.)

She’s asleep there right now, so shhh!

Cats always know their place. Humans can only get out of the way.