The Autumn Flush (AKA so much to do, so little time)

*Content note: discussion of spiders (no pictures)*

In which we discuss the weather

Overnight, it's becoming autumn here. This happens fairly reliably around the March Equinox, something for which I'm eternally grateful.

Summer here is hard. Even in a mild one, like the last two have been, the heat drags on you and makes it hard to keep on top of things. This is unfortunate, given that summer is also when the garden needs the most attention if it's going to stay alive. A single day of missed watering can easily kill off half the potted vegetables, if the north wind is blowing in off the desert. And the only thing that gets you out into the yard on the *really* hot days is the need to keep the chickens cool and well watered.

Summer *drags*. By the end of February you're certain it's never going to end. You'll be stuck sweating through your sheets at night and lying on the floor in the breezeway in the afternoon forever. You suck down gallons of water and curse the tiny eaves that let the mid-afternoon sun slide through the windows months before you want its warmth. You curse the weather service for promising low thirties (Celsius, my US friends) at the start of the week, only to revise it up, and up, and *up* as the days drag on.

And then comes the Equinox. Even when the daytime temperatures are still frying eggs on the concrete, the mornings start to smell like a promise of frost under the shade of the trees. The winds start to bend,  coming off the Antarctic instead of the desert, and though you can't smell the penguin shit in it yet, you know you will soon.

And the garden? The garden goes fucking apeshit.

The Autumn Flush and its effect on my to-do list

Even non-gardeners know about the Spring Flush. It's a bit hard to miss the entire world going "REPRODUCE!!!1!" around you.

(This, of course, only applies to climates that have what we would call "spring" and "autumn". There are plenty of places that don't have a four-season cycle. Alas, I've never lived in any of them.)

The same kind of flush happens in autumn, too. It tends to be a bit less dramatic, and the signs are subtly different, but it's there. The general feel of *coolness* in the wind is one such. The lawn suddenly turns into a jungle, volunteer seedlings sprout from every crack and cranny, and (my least favourite) pest populations tend to explode. (That reminds me, I need to check the rat traps in the shed again. And toss the stash for moths.)

We do get some native caterpillars though, so that's OK.

I have no idea what species this is, but it's welcome to my sweet potato.

*talk of spiders ahead*

In my house, there tends to be a sudden surge in the number and species of spiders setting up residence. Right now, our resident population of daddy-long-legs seems to have tripled overnight.

A Huntsman in the hallway has been read the tenancy act (stay above the height of the door lintels, and out of the kids' room, and we'll all get along fine), and another has been evicted. (I felt bad about that one. She had an egg sac and was just trying to find a good home for her babies. But rules are rules, spider, and the floor of the laundry is not the place to set up house.) 

Until yesterday, there were two web-weavers in the front yard, necessitating careful ingress and egress in the dark. It was our turn for garden club yesterday, and we have a house inspection coming up this week, so the yard is *far* more tidy than usual. The poor things lost half their anchor points for their webs in the blitz.

In case it wasn't obvious, we are pro-spider (most of them, anyway) here. Daddy-long-legs are fantastic insect control, and they stop the venomous arachnids like the redbacks and white-tips from moving in. Huntsman spiders are huge and thus terrifying to look at, but again, great insect control. (I live in a 70 year old house owned by a landlord who won't fix the window screens. Free insect control is fantastic.)

And really, most spiders want even less to do with you than you do with them. The vast majority of garden spiders will run the other way when you disturb them. Having seen how fast the chickens eat them when they're nearby, I can't blame the spiders for running. (I really want to embroider a giant spider being chased by a tiny chicken on something, one of these days. Preferably in the style of a manuscript drollery.)

Incidentally, fun fact: chickens *love* to eat redback spiders. And trapdoor spiders. And those ground-dwelling things that look like a tiny huntman. Probably they'd eat the daddy-long-legs too, but they live in the house and the chickens live in the yard, so the chickens haven't had a chance.

*Spider discussion fin*

The cheeky birds sometimes break out of their pen and come for a visit, though.

This is Myrtle. She came debeaked. (Don't debeak your chickens. It's cruel.)

The side effect of all this growth is a rearranging of priorities. Basically, I have to get the garden planted up *now*, so that the cool-season crops have time to establish before the cold and lack of sun halts their growth over winter. That is not a small amount of work, even for my rather laid-back attitude towards gardening.

But.

The Equinox also marks, for me, the start of the frantic push to get everything ready for the Medieval Faire season. The first weekend in May is a mere forty-five days away. While I'm getting better at the whole "camp in a rainy field for a weekend and look medieval for the punters" thing, there's still a non-trivial amount of organising and gear-checking/buying/borrowing to be done before then. Not to mention the finishing of new kit to wear.

All the Fibre Things I'm currently swamped by

A léine for an Irish-person

I started a new tunic the other week (I currently only have two, and one is rather short for the period) so I can have a better wardrobe. To be Really Extra Fancy, I decided to make it a léine for a set of Irish kit. I only have 3m of fabric, so I was sensible and drew out my cutting diagram first. Unfortunately, I did so *horribly wrong*.

Behold! My Very Incorrect cutting diagram!

The body pieces are fine, if potentially a bit narrow. Two set of gores will go at the sides and are fine. The front and back gores, however, are Not Fine - they only need to go to waist height. And Very Appallingly Not Fine At All, this layout left a *minuscule* amount of fabric for the sleeves. (It would have been plenty for regular, close-fitting sleeves. It definitely isn't enough for pendulous, baggy, léine sleeves.)

I cut out the body pieces, remeasured the remaining fabric, and set about re-drafting. Three attempts  and much swearing later, I had a (hopefully) workable cutting plan.

If the sleeves don't work, you will probably hear my shouting from wherever you happen to live.

These sleeves won't be the massive, almost-to-the-ground wonders of the later 1500s, but that's alright. Our time period is earlier than that - 1350-1450, right in the ditch of historical knowledge about the native Irish - so I'm doing a *lot* of conjectural work here.

Embroidery for Rich Bitches

I also started embroidering the woollen hood I made a couple of years ago, to up its fanciness level. We're supposed to be Rich Bitches, after all, and the wealthy *loved* them some embroidery in our time period. So did the rising merchant class.

This hood will have a nice simple pattern. Hopefully by the time I finish it, I'll feel confident enough to do something Really Quite Fancy on the linen hood I made last year.

The buttons are acorns, and I adore them.

I haven't decided exactly which pattern to do yet. Straight lines of stitching first, then the hard decisions can be made!

On top of that, there's the Regular Life Things to keep on top of, there's my Key to Weaving work I'm supposed to be doing, and about a thousand heddles to tie before I can move on to warping that up. There's several Easter gifts I have to finish in {checks calendar} less than three weeks. There's the Australian Permaculture Convergence I have to organised myself for - I still need a tent, and sleeping bag, and mess kit, and and and...

And what I'm doing instead is writing this post, and sitting in my autumn-flushed yard, and enjoying the peace and stillness for just that little while longer before the crunch comes down on me.

Not shown: washing line full of clothes, comfy relaxing chair, pile of knitting on the go.