This is the full photo of the shot that now graces the header of follow my bliss. I’m in love with this photograph.

The garden in front of our house is doing fascinating things these days, as the warm weather flirts with leaving us for good until spring, and the cold seems to be fluffing its feathers up for its grand entrance. The duel climates make for interesting outfits worn by the humans and interesting processes experienced by the plants.

Some of the trees in our neighborhood are completely dead, naked, ready for winter. And some still have green leaves. And in our front yard, some blossoms are dying while others are just popping open – on the same plant!

That photo, which I snapped earlier in the week, is of a yellow flowering plant who is partially alive and partially dead. The hay-colored floral skeletons are, obviously, the dead blossoms, and the bright yellow and green ones are the brand new flowers.

Our beautiful rose bush is doing the exact same thing – crunchy dead leaves and blossoms right next to buds that are ready to burst open and meet the world for the first time.

I just cannot get over this. It seems like some kind of phenomenon.

And I decided to put it as the new header on the blog, to represent this new phase in my life.

As much as I adored that old header photo of Chawser, our red cat, trapped behind a big iron door, staring out into a world beautiful sunshine that was just beyond his reach, it’s not a metaphor for my life anymore!

But old things dying while new things are being born – well, that’s a little more along the lines of what I’m going through right now. Old habits, patterns, and routines are dying. And I’m replacing them with new ideas, rhythms and experiences. These days, I’m learning more about who I am than I’d learned in two years sitting at that desk job. And the juxtaposition of old and new, life and death, the end and the beginning is striking.

On a more down-to-earth note, I’m BUSY AS HELL RIGHT NOW! GAH! I asked for this, certainly, by opening up our Fanny & Jane Holiday Shop online and choosing to take on most of the workload because Faryn’s got a full time job in an office these days (one that she really likes, though). But boy oh boy. With Thanksgiving just a week away, and our lovely friends and friends of friends wanting to support us with their orders, we are swamped. It’s a great problem to have, as they say. And as I stare down the barrel of having to produce 400 Red Velvet Cake Bites within the next 24 hours, I’m only slightly terrified.

Lucky (very very oh so very lucky) for me, my darling boyfriend stayed home today to help me get a ton of stuff baked, packaged and shipped out. And he also helped me organize a schedule, which has calmed my nerves considerably. After a nice long walk to the post office (the one farther away has better service than the one nearby), we broke for a well-deserved late lunch at a diner, and now we’re back home, awaiting Faryn’s arrival, so that the three of us can spend the evening baking sweets for the United States of America.

I cannot believe this is my life now. I cannot believe that this isn’t just a day off from the desk job, that this isn’t just a weekend or a vacation, but that this is my life. There is no desk job to return to on Monday morning. I bake and sell sweets for a living right now. Holy cow.

And it’s just the beginning.

….back to work. I can honestly say I haven’t worked this hard, day in and out, in a long time. It’s pretty awesome.