September came and went, bringing a return of old music and a new musical visitor to the cottage. John's favorite choir held the opening volley of the fall season via an all-day rehearsal, and the day after, a new piano was delivered! Buying the piano was a treat (and a fluke); Stanford was holding a used piano sale before stocking up on new instruments for the year, and John went to "just window shop... honestly!" The appointment to view the pianos was scheduled for a Friday afternoon after work, and we were headed up to the city via Caltrain immediately after, which led to a hasty viewing, love at first sight, and a hurried phone call to verify that John would be allowed into the house with his new 120 lb love. A rushed sale to John was conducted at Stanford while Autumn was waiting on the Caltrain platform, ready to hop on the train as soon as John arrived. The train was late! Biking frantically from Stanford, John reunited nine and a half minutes late with a patient Autumn, just as the train stopped to collect them, ten minutes behind schedule.
The (admittedly electric) piano now graces the wall between the fireplace and the front hall, in a perfect location to broadcast as much sound to our neighbor as possible. Thankfully, volume controls, headphones, and the frequent absence of our neighbor due to a seemingly pleasing new boyfriend make the piano a welcome addition to the cottage. Already spending money on classy new Henle Verlag piano scores, John has taken to the piano like a puppy to a new sock; mildly, but when engaged, ferocious! Mixed with traveling guitars and voices, it makes a worthy instrument.
In other news, a surprising front moved throughout the peninsula in the middle of the month, awakening the inhabitants of Quail Cottage well before dawn with a good number of thunderous crashes! Lightning and thunder, it turns out, doesn't need rain to develop, and soared through the area leaving a wistful John recalling great storms from his childhood. A slight burst of rain ... unusual for September ... shattered some records around the area; Pleasanton, instead of the 0.01 inches of rain recorded back in the '50s, saw an amazing 0.05 inches of rain. Raise the dikes, save the town!
The slight rain hasn't helped with our attempted discouragement of the backyard tomatoes, who continue their reign of both the smothered beans and the stone path, still yielding amazingly sweet fruits in an attempt to ameliorate our scorn. They produce so many, the ground is littered with over ripe tomatoes which have fallen off from our lack of picking. Unfortunately, that will have to make up for other mistakes around the patio; overzealous in getting fluffy/aerated soil, John added too much vermiculite to the pots, preventing good nutrition from making it to the plants. Our potted tomatoes and basil are still vertically challenged; lessons learned, perhaps our skill will be better next year.
We've been hard at work! Wine has been drunk, (much more bought when we discovered Picchetti and Ridge merely minutes away), and many pounds of honey made their way into mead form. After the experiments with mead recipes (batches 'A' through 'L') started and finished, the big guns came out, and a twelve pound jar of blackberry blossom honey from the Ferry Building farmers' market made its way into a nice three gallon carboy, bubbling away to provide us with homemade refreshments weeks from now. As the old adage says, drink your last batch as you make the next one, and thus it was! A strawberry mead cordial made, tastes all around, and with our neatly rearranged chinese lanterns, a patio party toasted the encroaching dusk. With days' and nights' lengths now matched, and darkness falling earlier these days, we wish you similar luck; great food, great drinks, and wonderful friends to help reign in the end of summer, looking forward to a hearty fall. Good night!