The other day the sight of the garden hose coiled around itself, half buried by a pile of dry leaves (no doubt, wet now, after this day of rain) gave me pause. Summer is really over, that hose seemed to be saying. Why haven't you put me away yet? But the hanging baskets of flowers, flowers I truly babied over the past few months, are still thriving, so that whenever I look up from a sinkful of dishes there's a gorgeous flash of fuschia and periwinkle. Fall always does this to me. So many people I know claim this to be their favourite season, and sometimes I'm among them. It's usually a very productive time, and with the recent addition of two-and-a-half guilt-free hours of "me" time in the afternoon, I've gotten lost in many a book. Lately I've been enjoying a collection of short stories selected by Lisa Moore, The Penguin Book of Contemporary Women's Short Stories. Everyone you'd expect to be in there is in it: Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, Jane Urquhart. And the "younger crew" like Annabel Lyon (kudos to her for her recent Giller nom), Lynn Coady, and Madeleine Thien. I'm the type to jump to the biographies/lists of publication credits before even reading an author's story. So, while it feels tremendously indulgent to sit and mull over another's world, at the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Okay, what are you doing about all those ideas fermenting in your head?" Productive, right?