and the reason I'm shivering is?

because we have winds from the Arctic blowing down on us. . . still, I think I'll just wear a few more layers and resist turning on the heating; I wonder how long I can keep that up!
.

and whilst we're on the subject of ice, don't these look fun? just imagine getting the food colouring out and playing "chill your fingers to the bone tetris"!

(I still can't quite believe that the summer's over)(*sobs*)

who needs a really good cup of coffee this morning? join the queue!

"I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold. . . . Better the blue silence and the gray west, the autumn mist on the river, and not any hate and not any love, and not anything at all of the keen and the deep: Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor, and the new corn shoveled in bushels And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows, Umber lights of the dark, Umber lanterns of the loam dark."

from Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn
Carl Sandburg

there is a real chill in the air this morning I haven't yet turned the heating on (it's not even the middle of September!) but the temperature warrants it; it made me think of autumn and harvests and hay bales and first frosts - but I chose this image because I want to linger in the warmth of summer for as long as I can