"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"

August gives way to September, and while summer doesn’t officially end until the 22^nd and the weather hasn’t begun to change yet, Labor Day weekend always feels like the end of the season to us. We’ve had a great summer here at the Attic, and between Christmas in July and Halloween in August, we’ve had a lot of fun trying to make a hot and humid summer our own. Still, I think we are all ready for the cooler days and crisper nights of autumn.

Hopefully you’ve completed your back-to-school shopping, so why not take the opportunity to give your house a fall make-over? In a few short weeks, the baskets of summer flowers and garden tomatoes and cucumbers will be gone. Maybe your house needs some new decorative touches, like a ceramic bowl with a gorgeous autumn leaf motif you can use for bread or an arrangement of seasonal vegetables, a luxurious velvet pumpkin or two to symbolize the abundance of the harvest season, or some candles in fall colors by Root. These are the highest quality soy-based, dripless candles, made by a family-owned Ohio company that has been making candles since 1869. We love them, and are thrilled to carry them in an era when some of the famous brand candle companies have been bought up by large corporations that have sadly not maintained the quality that made them our grandmothers’ favorites. (Some of those more famous candles have a distinct chemical smell these days, unfortunately.)

Speaking of pumpkins, as the days and nights turn cooler the idea of drinking a pumpkin spice latte in an oversized mug while reading a good book sounds to me like a wonderful idea. If it sounds good to you, too, we’ve got you covered: we have a delicious pumpkin spice latte mix, the mugs, and even the books. Or if lattes aren’t, so to speak, your cup of tea, come in to see the latest wines. My own policy? Lattes in the morning, wine in the evening, and I’m a happy woman.

Finally, to put us all in the spirit of the season, here are the first few lines of John Keats’ wonderful ode, “To Autumn”:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core