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A Letter from Caitlyn Paxson
Dear Reader,
A mere week ago it still felt like the end of summer here on the Island. Since then, we’ve had our first snow and the bite of winter has begun to nip at our heels. I find that I don’t mind at all. October was full to bursting with haunting, witching, and other seasonal antics, and I’m ready to embrace the quiet time of year.
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Image Description: My séance table, reading for rapping, at Beaconsfield Historic House.
The cats always get more snuggly as the temperatures dip – as I write this, Monty is lying on my desk, draped across my forearms while I type.
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Image Description: Bruce and Monty conspiring. The Contessa sitting upon her throne.
October was a month of many reviews. First I did a roundup of three witchy books, which you can find here. Then I sought out five YA novels that deal in ghosts and haunting, and you can read about them here. Of all of them, I think The Voice Upstairs is my pick for the best read of the season, as it combines a clever and biting ghost story with a manor house mystery. Though truly, my top pick for the book of the haunting season wasn’t one I read for review, but rather one I avoided reviewing professionally because I just wanted to be able to just enjoy it as a reader: Starling House by Alix Harrow.
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Image Description:Starling House amongst my dying rudbeckia.
I really enjoyed both of Harrow’s previous novels, and for me, this book really showed a whole new level of excellence in terms of voice, juggling complex themes, and readability. It’s a gothic house story about a woman named Opal who takes a job cleaning Starling House, a crumbling, obviously haunted mansion in her dying Kentucky mining town. Opal has a number of reasons for putting up with the shifty house and its even shiftier guardian, a man who hired her but seems determined to drive her away. Mostly, she wants to unravel why she’s been dreaming about the place for years, and why it seems that she is tied to a town that has given her nothing but grief. This is a story about dreams, duty, and the exploitation wrecked upon people and places by capitalism, and I highly recommend it!
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Interpreting
October really is the time for us witchy bitches to shine, am I right? For the whole month, I moonlighted as Madame Evangeline Grey, Spirit Medium and Conduit for the Otherworldly at Beaconsfield Historic House. This is our third year offering The Beaconsfield Séance, which is a theatrical reenactment of a fake Victorian séance. I do magic! I sing! I get possessed! It’s such a fun time, and I feel so lucky that this is part of what I get to do for work. We closed out the month with a big family event at another one of the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation’s sites, Orwell Corner Historic Village – The Halloween Hauntacular! I played the role of the Witch of Orwell Corner and enlisted the help of about five hundred children to craft a potion. I’ve never cackled so much in my life.
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Image Description:The Witch of Orwell Corner. Getting ready to brew up some magic!
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Crafting
Our first frost came late this year. As October rolled along and my flowers kept blooming, I started imagining how beautiful they were going to be on that fated morning when they would all be coated in frost, like confections sprinkled in powdered sugar. It’s such a fleeting moment of beauty, all the more precious for the ending it heralds for the garden. Was it possible to capture that moment in a Wreath of the Month photo?
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Image Description: A perfect zinnia, coated in frost. The Frost Queen just before sunrise. More confectionary flowers. The Frost Queen in the golden glow of true morning.
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I kept a close eye on the forecast, and when it finally looked like we might get frost, I made a wreath and left it lying on the lawn overnight. I awoke before dawn and looked out, thrilled to see telltale blue icing on the grass outside my window. I went out with my camera, and sure enough, there was the wreath, perfectly frosted. It felt like collaborating with the wild spirit of nature herself!
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Gardening
We had most of a month of gardening glory before things really started to wind down, and even today, I was out there picking kale, broccolini, and peppers and harvesting ears of popcorn and dried beans.
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Image Description: Two views of the fading veggie garden. A late harvest.
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This year I did a bit of a pumpkin experiment, throwing a handful of seeds into a pile of largely un-composted cow manure and then resolutely ignoring them. The result was a rather shocking bumper crop of absolutely enormous pumpkins! That already seemed like a Halloween jackpot, but then one day we realized that the pumpkin patch was full of frolicking black kittens! A stray cat had taken up residence with her brood, and they liked the pumpkins so much that they followed them up onto the porch.
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Image Description: Pumpkins with mama cat. Naughty little familiars.
Not to worry, since these pictures were taken, all of these kitties have been taken in and will soon be getting safe homes of their own. |
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Image Description: Three sisters, but make them PINK! |
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Musing
It feels dissonant to send out a cheerful missive from my little corner of the world when my heart is heavy with all the violence being done to people who should be safe but instead are facing the worst kind of horrors. I hope that wherever you are, you are safe, and that you are able to take care of yourself and others in these times of incomprehensible grief.
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Image Description: The last bouquet of the season.
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Flowers don't solve the world's ills or heal broken hearts, but I do believe that every bit of beauty helps.
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Image Description: The last bouquet, from above.
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Until next time, wishing you the best books and the most berry-full brambles,
Caitlyn
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I write this from the traditional unceded territory known as Mi’kma’ki. Two books by Indigenous authors that I really enjoyed recently are To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose and Into the Bright Open by Cherie Dimaline.
(All opinions expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not represent my employer.)
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