October

Welcome to October! Hopefully you are settling into your autumn season: reaching for warmer clothes again, noticing the crispness in the air, and feeling the year beginning to turn inward.

October has always felt like an inward month to me, too. It is a time when I find myself thinking about where I have been, what has carried me this far, and what I want to carry forward. I think about the people who came before me, the things they passed down intentionally and unintentionally, and the ways they continue to be present in my life.

This summer, I was speaking to a group of people about my Oma, my German grandmother, and mentioned that gladiolus are my favorite flowers because they were hers. Not a week later, several gladiolus began growing in my yard. I have lived here for more than two years. I didn't plant them, and I had never seen them grow here before. Maybe it was a wonderful coincidence. I happen to believe it was my Oma saying hello.

That is part of what I want to make room for this October: remembrance. The recipes we still make. The plants someone taught us to recognize. The objects we keep. The stories we tell. The habits we don't even realize we inherited. And sometimes, perhaps, a flower appearing unexpectedly in the yard.

But remembering where we came from doesn't mean we are obligated to carry all of it forward. We aren't bound to traditions simply because they are old or because our families practiced them before us. We don't have to admire everything our ancestors believed, support the choices they made, or preserve customs that no longer reflect who we are.

As we move toward the holiday season, October feels like a particularly good time to look at our traditions a little more closely. Why do we do the things we do every year? Which traditions still bring meaning, connection, or joy? Which ones are performed mostly out of obligation? What have we inherited that deserves to be tended, and what are we ready to leave behind?

We are not only the descendants of the people who came before us. We are also the ancestors of those who may come after us. We get to decide what we add to the story. We can keep what is meaningful, change what no longer fits, and begin traditions entirely our own. I like the idea of living in such a way that someday, generations from now, someone might remember us with the same warmth with which we remember the people who mattered to us—and perhaps feel honored to carry a little piece of us forward.

XOXO,
Angie

September

September always feels like a month that asks me to loosen my grip a little. By now, the year has had enough time to become itself. So much of what we imagined in spring has flourished, failed, changed shape, or surprised us entirely. The garden has made some of its own decisions (like the volunteer butternut squash that just won’t quit!), the house bears the evidence of a summer well lived, and very little has unfolded exactly according to plan. As we speak, there are composting bins in our library, plant cuttings in the living room, and baskets of foraged food EVERYWHERE waiting to be processed!

There is something freeing in just letting it go. Choosing to live seasonally means to stop trying to control the story. We are just a small but mighty component in the big picture. Here in central Ohio we’ve been inundated with rain (did you know that we have more precipitation than Seattle??). While I do in fact feel personally attacked by the rain, I just have to lean into it at this point. I can’t weed the gardens, but I can prepare ingredients for a week of meals. I can’t forage for goldenrod, but I can process all the dried herbs from the summer that are begging to be stored properly. I never want The Cottage Year to become another standard to be met. I want it to be somewhere we can return when we need reminding that our lives are already happening.

Maybe you missed the berries this year. Maybe the garden got away from you (hello, we did not plant a single food this year). Maybe you spent more summer evenings inside than you intended. Maybe life simply required your attention elsewhere. None of that makes the season less yours.

The cottage life I care about isn't the perfected one. It's the sink that needs emptying before you can put flowers on the table, the garden bed that went completely wild, the meal eaten outside on mismatched plates, the herb you finally recognize because you've walked past it a hundred times. It's noticing one evening that the air has changed and lingering outside for another five minutes. Paying attention to the marginal things - the liminal spaces, the mundane.

As we enter September, I find myself wanting less from the season than I once did. I don't need autumn to transform me. I want to make good food for the people I love, care for my home without treating it as a project that will someday be finished (we all know it never will be), know the land around me a little better than I did last year, and remember that tending a life is mostly made up of very small things.

I hope you will treat everything you find here in that same spirit. Take what is useful and leave what isn't. Adapt things to your own home, landscape, family, and capacity. Let traditions grow because they mean something to you. Keep notes. Change your mind. Miss things. Begin again. There is room for all of it here.

Thank you for choosing to spend another month at the cottage with me. Every time you learn the name of a plant, make something for someone you love, look more closely at the place where you live, or simply stop long enough to notice the season, you are helping make The Cottage Year what I hoped it could be: not a set of instructions for living, but a shared practice of paying attention.

I am so glad you're here.

With warmth,
Angie