month in review: october is for nesting

This month, I found myself setting up for our first winter in the little stone casita in the gardens, and finding abundance in unexpected places.

Oct 31, 2025

How is it already the end of October? Here in Catalunya, we have had I am told a slightly warmer October than normal, with daytime temps in the mid 70s most of the month, and just this final week it’s gotten a little cooler-60s during the day. My October days here are like a Michigan June. Not unhappy about that.

Looking back on this month, I realize it has been a lot of nesting and puttering. It’s like when you’re at the very end of your pregnancy, about to bring a new life into the world, and you suddenly get the urge to get everything set up and cozy and ready for the next stage. You’re more tired than you thought was possible to be tired, your body hurts, you’re crazy emotional, but also: you somehow gather up your strength and invest long hours in putting up food for the future and arranging furniture and getting everything ready. You know that feeling, ladies? That has been me this month, to a tee. Minus the giant belly, that has been me.

I have been super tired, going through some changes, and preparing for a new life stage. This will be our first winter in the little stone cottage in the huertos (the garden plots on the outskirts of town) and so I have been doing all kinds of things inside and out to set up for a cozy winter here.

For example, I bought two reclining chairs (you know those zero gravity chairs?) to set on the patio where it gets afternoon sun so I can sit outside and write in the warmest part of the day, all winter long.

I am setting up the garden for winter crops and preparing for spring harvests: garlic, carrot, kale, spinach. Transplanted herbs from the bounty of a friend’s land. I am fall sowing lots and lots of flowers. I realized there is nowhere to buy fresh cut flowers here in town, and I think we could all use more flowers in our lives, so I have set out to resolve that. Perhaps I’ll have a little roadside stand alongside the cottage, you know with those honor jars like you find out in the country in northern Michigan… who knows what I will end up doing next year with all those flowers, but if nothing else, I’ll be growing beauty, in abundance.

And inside, I am back to my kitchen puttering ways. I have been harvesting olives, tree by tree, to experiment with different ways of curing, brining, and marinating olives. I’m doing some in a salt cure, just layers of olives and salt, that will turn out like those dry-pack kalamata olives that I love so much. I’ve got one batch of olives that will be brined with garlic and lemon and thyme, another with rosemary, and so on. I even started a dedicated notebook (because of course I did) to keep track of all my experiments and results. Once everything is ready, I plan to have friends over for an olive tasting, so we can assess the results and differences, and I can narrow down all my trials to a few different kinds that I can do next year. I’m lighting fires and trying out homemade seed crackers and cooking down the last of the tomatoes into a gorgeous sauce with lots of onion and garlic. I’m setting up beds with more blankets, I’m lighting candles, and I even bought some little twinkle lights for that dark area along the entry stairs where there’s a giant boulder as our wall. I am, in short, setting up for a new life.

It’s super overwhelming and not without its range of emotions. It’s exhausting, and exciting, and full of hope.

So at the end of the month, though tired and overwhelmed, I find myself mostly so grateful. Despite all the …. Everything… in the world and in my life, I am finding my way. I am setting up to grow an abundance of beauty, full of hope.

And beauty and hope, on its own, is more than enough.