Harvest Moon on Sunday - September 30th

   The full moon this coming sunday is called the 'Harvest Moon' because it is the full moon that comes on a date that is the closest to the autumnal equinox. Heralding our descent into the darker months of the year, this low-hanging moon often looks bigger and more reddish than fulls moons look during other times of the year. If you live in the northern hemisphere and are out driving early on Sunday evening, you may want to pull over to ogle it from the safety of the roadside!
   While an enormous harvest moon may seem like an ominous sight, it has traditionally been beneficial to farmers and hunters who used the additional light after sunset to bring in their crops and stalk the fields in order to bring in as much bounty as possible to store up before winter's onslaught.
You can read more about the harvest moon on NBC News.

If the idea of full moons, falling leaves, and whispering handsome spirits make you swoon, you may enjoy reading The Gardener. In this novel, the suave Italian spirit, Alphonso--who once tended Victorian gardens in his former, mischievious life--cleans up Georgia's grandmother's garden by the light of the moon. Here is an excerpt:

      He saw her and stopped, leaning against the rim of the lower tier.  “Signora. You startled me! I was just pondering my next task. Have you seen the vegetable garden? I was about to start on the roses…”
     “I...I just wondered if you could use something to drink.”
     “Lovely. A glass of Chianti...Absinthe...or another libation?”
     She laughed. “I was thinking more along the line of a glass of water or a cup of tea.”
     He walked towards her then stood just a foot away. She smelled earth and sweat on him mixed with the scent of the decaying roses on the arbor above. The sweat on his pale skin glistened in contrast against the cavernous blackness of the circular garden behind him. His eyes were a brilliant verdant green even in the dim light. They mesmerized her.
     A moth fluttered in front of her face. As she shooed it away and broke away from his gaze, she suddenly became aware of his closeness. They were alone in the garden in the dark. The lights next door at Annie’s and Fred’s were out, and she felt...well...not really uncomfortable...but a little strange as she realized how little she knew about this man. An exhilarating sensation of danger mixed with lust rippled through her.
     “Really, Ms. McKenna. I am fine. You are much too early. I would prefer that you wait and see my finished work tomorrow morning.”
     “That Ms. or Ma’am business just makes me feel so old.”
     “Old?” he chuckled. “Do you see that rose bush just beyond the arbor?”
      He made a grand gesture toward a sprawling tangle of thorns six feet tall to her left. In the daylight, she would have been able to see its leaves, reddened by frost and the few remaining drooping blossoms that were somewhere between the color of freshly churned butter and day old champagne.
     “It is called Honeydew. It was bred over a century ago and won many awards in its day. If you could see it in the sunshine next to yourself, one would say that you are much younger and no less beautiful than it.”
     Georgia felt a flush of heat come to her cheeks.
     “You are a bambina compared to the cottonwood trees down by the river. Some of them have been here, I’m sure, for two hundred years or more.”
     “How long have you been a gardener, Daniel?”
     He smiled, a flash of white teeth a mile wide. “A very long time...since before I was born, I think.”