These are my favorite months of the year: August~September~October~November. The golden, sunlight, deepening shadows, ripening fruit, showy blossoms, hum of insects and bats--I'm always happiest and most productive in late summer and fall.

Everywhere there are signs of the beautiful, holy circle, 'world without end'.

Jewel weed and goldenrod are beginning to bloom.

And the meadows are five feet tall and thrumming with life. 

Sometimes I like to leave little messages among the pebbles on the trail for people to find.

This is the first year that my pitiful little peach tree has borne fruit--there are four exquisitely blushing peaches.

For a few years, I wore my hair quite short, but for most of my life I've worn it long (for a period of twenty years I rarely had it cut.) But then, last year in March, I gave up haircuts altogether (too expensive). My hair hasn't seen scissors or a hair dryer in almost a year and a half. This is what it looks like now--my old witchy waves are back, threaded with silver.

If you want to know where I am, you can find me here: in the woods, tending my roses, swimming, exploring old towns, wading in the sea, sitting by a fire under the stars, painting messages on pebbles, searching for old postcards in the early morning light at the Flea. Perhaps where we are defines us more than anything else.

I came across this quote on Lis's blog (linked below under "West"--you must see her gorgeous nature journal!)

It’s all too easy to get stuck inside our own heads, to live out of our imagination. But the deep, honest, authentic ancestral wisdom we’re looking to reclaim is the wisdom of the land, the wisdom of place, and in order to develop that wisdom we need to get out of our heads and out onto the land.

 - Sharon Blackie, "Becoming Native to Place" from Reclaiming the Wise Woman

Yes, if you want to 'find yourself', get to know your neighborhood: the goldenrod, the birch, the little brown bat, the monarch butterfly, the lichen, the hill, the moon, the trail around the pond, the clouds and rain, the moss-covered boulder. There is much truth in knowing your place.

Need a compass? You might find these posts as inspiring as I did:

North
South
East
West