Just a quiet note to close out what has felt like a very long month. Lots of grief and frayed nerves out there in these times. Grateful to everyone staying with the trouble and caring for their neighbors and their communities right now…

"Needle-dark December smells. / She walks with wonder everywhere."

— Muriel Rukeyser, from The Collected Poems; "Christmas Eve"

We await our first frost of the season this coming week. I hope you are staying cozy and keeping your spirits up, wherever this note may find you…

Greetings from the heart of New York City where I've been assembling all your lovely parcels with care this week, while we await the first of the autumn storms…

I've always adored September in New York and these past few weeks have graced us with exquisite weather and a bustling energetic shift. Truly a marvel.

The last few weeks seem to have flown by, and there's been a subtle shift in the air lately, a little hint of the season to come…

A stormy afternoon here in the city, the garden is an overgrown tangle, the humidity is intense. Deep summer, I call it. Fresh harvests of the most beautiful plant material begin to arrive at the studio…

"June's edge. The sun / 

Turns kind."

Louise Glück, from "Solstice" in Firstborn

THE WINDS OF MAY
are soft and restless
in their leafy garments
that rustle and sway
making every moment movement.

-Ursula K. Le Guin

Amidst the absolute chaos of our collective lives here in this moment, the garden somehow still emerges. We put up the greenhouse and start our seeds. The spring ephemerals push up through the soil. We ground ourselves in observing these cycles.

Devoting myself to fussy little flower projects this month. I’ve always meant to make jasmine enfleurage from my little vines…

A month for little creature comforts. I saw the planets all in a line on a clear night above the East Village. I looked after the doves of a neighbor, observed the beginning of ramadan with friends. The lunar new year arrived, the year of the snake.