Autumn is here now and I startled a beautiful deer in back of the house yesterday when I went out to hang up the laundry. It was a lovely dappled brown and black and it disappeared into the woods immediately.

The chestnuts have started to fall and so have the corbezzoli berries. The porcini mushrooms are still going. I am making plum jam later today, but chestnut butter is on the immediate horizon and corbezzoli jam after that. The air is cold in the mornings and very clear so that we can see the individual windows on the houses down on the coast. The sea looks smooth and burnished in the sun.

Daniele and Alice have decided to start a line of their own wine at the pub and Daniele asked me to design the label. (At first he hired an actual professional designer, but he didn't like anything the designer came up with and I happened to be sitting around drinking wine with the boys at the time, which is how most things happen to me. That has been true my entire life. Being underfoot has worked out well for me as a life strategy.) I did about four designs and they chose the one with the green door, which will be a good souvenir of the place. So I have, at long last, come into my true calling. Jonathan and I are anxiously waiting for the labelled bottles to appear. The naked bottles are already there and Daniele gave us one to take home to "inspire" my drawings.

I also made another book trailer. These are much easier to make than the actual books themselves are.