Before the autumn rush begins: a mug of hot tea, a good book, and a shorn sheepdog

Last week I set up a small tea cupboard, with a little shelf and two drawers, in our kitchen. The drawers hold boxes of Irish breakfast, Darjeeling, English breakfast, cinnamon spice, rose hip, and jasmine teas, and the shelf is just right for a china sugar bowl and teacup-shaped spoon holder. As soon as the maple leaves began to fall and I felt the first real chill at twilight, I knew that, along with the coming holidays, tea-drinking season had arrived. The remains of a nasty chest cold gave me a reason to rest in the middle of an afternoon, reading and drinking hot tea from my favorite mug. (I have a cherished collection of English bone china cups and saucers, a legacy from my grandmother, but use stout pottery mugs for everyday tea drinking. The delicate cups come out only for fancy tea parties, when adult women can turn into little girls again.)

I sat in my red chair that day, set down my book for awhile and watched fat snowflakes falling in graceful swirls onto our lawn and gardens. The first snowfall in Moscow always brings a moment of pure joy for me. As a West Side transplant, I remember weeks of rain, gray and soggy days, and the wish – rarely granted – that we would have snow in Seattle for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or maybe in January. The falling flakes last week were the perfect transition from the glorious colors and flaming sunsets of our Indian summer on the Palouse, to the crisp air and gusty winds that blew us straight into the heart of autumn. The weather's change seemed to happen overnight, and I felt doubly thankful that I'd planted all the spring tulips and daffodil bulbs weeks ago, under a sunny Idaho blue sky.

Before I leaped fully into the year's busiest season, I spent another recent afternoon turning our living room into Miss Sydney's House of Sheepdog Shearing. Rags, our elderly Old English sheepdog, was overdue for a grooming. His long, shaggy hair had grown tangled and matted over the summer, as his health deteriorated. My husband and I were not sure he would live into the autumn, and we didn't want to cause the needless anxiety that any sort of grooming triggers for him. Finally, though, I refilled the veterinarian's prescription for the tranquilizers he needs before a beauty session, and waited until the pills had calmed him. My husband grooms Rags with electric clippers, but I use only hairdresser's scissors, because that tool leaves more fur on the big guy – and winter is coming. Through more than four hours, I followed my large, groggy dog , snipping away, as he lay on his leather couch, then on the living room rug, and finally wedged himself into his favorite meditation spot – under the library table in our entryway. By twisting, contorting, kneeling, stretching and groaning (a lot), I reached every inch of Rags' fur while he lay, conked out, until he roused himself and sleepwalked to his next spot.

Our only problems arose when I accidentally nicked his ear – he yelped once, and I cried – and when he made a request I could not, in good conscience, agree to honor. He wanted me to leave the shaggy hair on top of his head long enough for a man-bun. As tactfully as possible, I convinced him that this unfortunate hair style is a fad (which cannot fade away quickly enough for moi.) His style, I reminded him, is classic (classic goofball, but no need to include the entire description.) Man-buns will soon go the way of the mullet (which I rather liked,)but floppy ears and shaggy hair falling over brown eyes, above a fat black nose, will never go out of style at our house.

Our cats are settling in for the cold months, too. I've laid small fleece rugs in front of the heat registers in the living room, so Benjamin BadKitten and Abigail Grump can keep their tails warm while they share family time with us. (Their rugs haven't gotten too much use, though. Benjamin prefers the soft security of my lap while I pet him, or the privacy of his flowered chair, while he plots his springtime coup d'etat to overthrow my chief garden staffer and return to power.)

 

Tessa the Vague, the current chief staffer, prefers to sleep on a small wool rug that's tucked behind the TV cabinet. Tess remains a loner by nature, although she's become social enough to track my movements indoors and lumber up onto the arm of my red chair at reading and tea-drinking time. A small calico cat, with vacant green eyes and a twitchy nature, who stares, unblinking, is not an ideal companion when I'm trying to enjoy my book and sip hot tea. But I pet her gently, and hope this season of cold and indoor time will help her deal with the transition that may be coming next spring out in the garden. I'm getting the clear message, tweaked by the relentless barrage of snark from my BadKitten, that Tessa the Vague is just flat-out not management material.

Coming to readers from high on a tabletop, it's autumn décor time

Something – a jumbled mass of glittered red, orange, and yellow silk leaves, tiny pilgrims, papier-mache' pumpkins, and a turkey-shaped candle – had exploded on top of the dining room table. And someone, a person who is neurotically afraid of heights, was standing, shrieking with fear, on top of that table, among the debris of autumn décor. She had glitter on her head, thumbtacks clutched in her fist, and the sure sense that she was going to pitch forward, hard, onto the tabletop, directly onto that stupid wax turkey. Only a reflexive reach upward, with her flatted palm on the ceiling to steady herself, saved her from a certain face-plant and possible broken bones.

By the time her husband, having heard her banshee wail, reached the dining room, she had crawled off the tabletop and was standing shakily on the floor. What happened? her husband asked. When she explained, he simply regarded her for a moment before observing, “You know, sweetheart, any story that starts out with, “Well, I was standing on top of the dining room table...' never ends well.”

I never get glitter on my head or mess about with fat, wax turkeys (except Benjamin BadKitten)when I'm in my garden. Last week I decided to decorate our front porch and the inside of our house for autumn. Before I braved the dining room, I set up a fall display on the porch, with odd-shaped and uniquely colored gourds, pumpkins, dried corn, and silk leaves. Inside, our living room mantel looked fallishly festive, with my collection of wooden folk art set among miniature bouquets of silk flowers, all in autumn colors. I can reach the top of the mantel to decorate it. I don't even need a step-stool. But the next stop on the décor train was the dining room and its tall picture window.

Every fall, and again during Christmas, I attach seasonal garlands of leaves and flowers above that window. The garlands are long, stiff and unwieldy, and I am short, small, and not getting any younger. Every year, during the hanging of the garlands, I find my seasonal spirit severely tested. Last week, the dining room table seemed the ideal solution: It was the right height and wide enough to accommodate my balletic, garland-wrangling moves.

I maneuvered myself onto the table, reminded myself not to look down, and secured one end of the first garland to the drapery rod above the window. Just as the second garland settled into place, the first one slipped to the floor. (Imaginative readers may add their own colorful soundtrack to the next three attempts.)Maybe the Garden Goddess sensed my panic and floated inside to the rescue, because I finally managed to anchor both of those ornery sets of leaves, strands and flowers above the window – and then looked down. At least my tabletop panic attack happened after the garlands went up, because, nearly a week later, I'm still not jazzed about another ascent. When I considered the long, wide, L-shaped set of windows in our breakfast nook, I decided they could remain undecorated. I have stood on our kitchen table. Maybe, in late November, I might be willing to scale its heights to hang Christmas garlands above it. Maybe.

To forget the indoor décor drama, I spent a recent afternoon outside in our front yard, at Mini Leaf Mountain and Big Honker Leaf Mountain, the two mounds of oak and maple leaves my husband and I raked for our two young grandsons to jump into. Leaf Mountain Day has been a tradition at our house for three years, ever since our daughter, son-in-law and children moved to Moscow. A huge black maple tree stands in glory at a corner of our yard, and a sugar maple and towering oak tree blaze with color in our side yard.

The little boys, especially the eight-year-old, leaped and somersaulted into Big Honker, giggling, shouting and sending flurries of dry leaves fluttering onto their heads in the October sunshine. Our littler guy, age six, had to retire early from Mini Leaf Mountain and come inside with me for Band-aids, lemonade and cookies, after a sharp chunk of clay soil lodged in his rubber boot and tore a mean scratch in his leg. So both boys ended up decorating my beloved dollhouse for Halloween. They seemed skeptical at first, as if this might not be manly work, until they spied the miniature jack-o-lanterns, with scary, gross, disgusting faces, and they fell to with great enthusiasm.

When their dad had to leave early, we dealt with a dilemma. The little guy's sore leg made it impossible for him to wear his boots to walk home, I couldn't carry him for five blocks, and we have no child safety seats in our car. So I thought fast, and we ended up marching in our own pre-Halloween parade,with the eight-year-old on his scooter, and me pushing the six-year-old in my trusty green gardening wheelbarrow. We met several of my friends along the parade route, and each of them laughed. I could have told them that rolling my grandson home in a wheelbarrow beats the fear of falling from the top of the dining room table any day.