The General Store at The Mill

🍂 11th October — Find Something Beautiful in Decay

The Owl and the Pussycat | 27 Nights to Samhain

There is a peculiar beauty to October.

The roses have long since lost their summer perfection, their petals curling at the edges like the pages of an old and much-loved book. Hydrangeas fade into dusty pinks and parchment browns. The hedgerows grow untidy, heavy with berries, while the trees put on their most magnificent display just before surrendering their leaves to the earth.

Nature, it seems, has saved her finest colours for the farewell.

There is something wonderfully reassuring about a woodland floor in autumn. Beneath the fallen leaves, fungi quietly go about their business, breaking down what has finished its season and returning it to the soil.

What appears to be an ending is already becoming the beginning of something else.

And perhaps that's the loveliest thing about this time of year.

Autumn doesn't attempt to disguise its age or apologise for its imperfections. It simply grows more interesting.
For today's little entry in our Samhain almanac, we're celebrating the beauty of things past their prime. A weathered seed head, a curling leaf, a moss-covered stone, the last rose clinging stubbornly to its stem.

A little reminder that beauty isn't always found in new beginnings, flawless surfaces or youthful perfection.

Sometimes it's found in the glorious business of growing older.

🍁 The Owl & The Pussycat

🍂 8th October – A Walk at Dusk 🌙

As Halloween draws nearer, take a little walk just as daylight begins to fade.
Watch the golden light turn to grey, the shadows lengthen, and the familiar world become ever so slightly mysterious.
Listen for the rustle of leaves, the last birdsong and the quiet arrival of evening.

There is something wonderfully magical about that fleeting moment when day hands over to night.

No tricks, no treats. Just a little autumn enchantment. 🍁
The Owl and the Pussycat 🦉🐈‍⬛
Finding magic in the everyday.

27 Days countdown

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🍂 7th October — Learn About an Autumn Plant

By October, the medicine cabinet begins its annual migration towards tissues, paracetamol and things promising to make a streaming nose disappear before morning.

Outside, nature has its own autumn cupboard.

Elder and echinacea.

Elder — Sambucus nigra — is one of those plants so woven into the British hedgerow that it's easy to walk past without really seeing it.

In early summer it covers itself in creamy white flowers. By late summer and autumn, those flowers have become drooping clusters of berries, ripening through red into a purple so dark it is almost black.

And wherever elder grew, folklore seems to have grown around it.

Protection, spirits, superstition and old household remedies have all gathered around the tree over the centuries. Elderberry itself has a long history in folk medicine for winter coughs, colds and influenza.

Across the Atlantic came another plant with a rather different appearance.

Echinacea — the purple coneflower.

Tall, slightly wild-looking and gloriously pink-purple, it flowers in late summer when much of the garden is beginning to tire. Its species are native to North America, where Indigenous peoples used echinacea medicinally long before it found its way into bottles and packets on modern pharmacy shelves.

Today both plants have become familiar companions to the season of sniffles.

And this is where folklore and science make interesting bedfellows.

Research into elderberry has produced some preliminary evidence that it may help with symptoms of colds and other upper-respiratory infections, but the evidence is still limited.

Echinacea has been studied much more: it may slightly reduce the chance of catching a cold, while whether it actually shortens one remains uncertain. Neither is a proven treatment for influenza.

Quick fact check - don't eat raw elderberries unless you want a cyanide experience. Yeah, that's right. You heard it here, raw elderberries contain toxins.

Which seems very Owl & Pussycat. And General Store on Tour.

We can enjoy the old knowledge without pretending every old remedy was right, and enjoy the science without losing our fascination with the plants themselves.

One grew beside our lanes and hedgerows.

One came from the prairies and open woodlands of North America.

Both somehow found their way into the modern autumn cupboard.

Outside, meanwhile, the leaves are falling, the nights are lengthening and somewhere somebody has just sneezed.

Winter is coming. Pass the tissues. 🍂🌿
..But let's enjoy the Autumn season a little longer first...

The Owl & The Pussycat — 27 Nights to Samhain

🍂 6th October — A Card for October

Yesterday we lit a candle against the gathering dark.
Today, rather obligingly, the cards handed us a man carrying a lantern.

The Hermit.

He stands alone on the Rider–Waite–Smith card, wrapped in grey, high on a mountain. There is no crowd behind him. No great display of magic. No promise that somebody else has thoughtfully drawn him a map.

Just an old man, a staff, and a small light held out against an enormous night.

Which feels rather appropriate for October.

The natural world is becoming quieter now. Trees are shedding their summer finery. Evenings are drawing inward. The bright abundance of the year is beginning to retreat towards bare branches, dark earth and winter.
The Hermit does something similar.

Traditionally, he speaks of solitude, reflection and wisdom sought away from the noise of everybody else's opinions. Not loneliness. Not hiding from the world forever. Simply stepping away from its clamour for long enough to hear your own thoughts again.

And that lantern matters.
It doesn't illuminate the entire road.
Only enough of it to take the next few steps.

There's something wonderfully authentic about that.

We live surrounded by demands for plans, answers, destinations and certainty. The Hermit offers something quieter: you don't necessarily need to see the end of the road from where you're standing.

Sometimes a little light, carried carefully, is enough.

And so our second day arrives with an old man wandering through the October darkness carrying yesterday's candle for us.

Rather considerate of him, really. 🕯️

The Owl & The Pussycat — 27 Nights to Samhain

It happens first at the edges. And the edges flow softly from a summer hue to the autumn pallet.

A little bronze amongst the green. A scatter of yellow beneath a tree that yesterday still seemed to belong to summer. Then suddenly the lanes are edged in copper and russet, leaves scrape along the pavement in the wind, and the whole landscape begins its slow turn towards winter.

Cosy sweater season. The best time. To curl up and hunker down while all around outside becomes a vision of Keats.

The good jumper comes down from the cupboard. The kettle seems permanently half-full. Evening creeps through the windows earlier each day and lamps begin glowing behind curtains while there is still a little blue left in the sky.

Nature is drawing inward.

Trees let go of what they no longer need. Seeds disappear into dark earth. The riotous green of summer softens into ochre, umber and gold.
And we make our own little suns.
A lamp in a window. A fire in the grate. A candle on the table.
So that is where 27 Nights to Samhain begins. I might have missed the boat with the first few days, but hey, give a girl a moment to readjust seasonally.

Just a flame. A small candle against the gloaming.

Put the kettle on. Pull on the good jumper. Let the room grow darker around that tiny pool of gold.
Autumn has arrived.
We might as well make ourselves comfortable. For me, personally, that means binge watching Northern Exposure and having a nostalgic throwback time.

🕯️🍂
The Owl & The Pussycat

Sunday morning at The General Store on Tour...

You might imagine that after a day out trading, Sunday would involve sitting peacefully at a desk, taking stock, balancing the books and contemplating the future of the travelling emporium.

It does not.

I'm currently sitting in a trampoline park drinking tea while an overstimulated child hurls himself repeatedly into the air.

This is apparently Head Office. 😁

Yesterday the General Store went out on the road. Today there are boxes to unpack, jewellery to put away, soap to count, bits of ribbon whose original purpose has been lost to history — and absolutely none of it is being done because I'm supervising bouncing.

Although Saturday was a quieter fayre. Not every market is bustling, not every table comes home empty, and that's rather the nature of taking a shop out into the world.

But it did give me time to look at the slightly peculiar collection I've somehow assembled and remember what The General Store on Tour was supposed to be.

Not a shop selling one particular thing.

A General Store.

Things I've found. Things I've made. Things other people have made beautifully. Useful things. Ridiculous things. Things with stories. Things you didn't know you wanted because you'd never actually seen one before.

There's something I rather like about that in a world where we're increasingly expected to know precisely what we want, type it into a search box and let an algorithm show us seventeen nearly identical versions.

The General Store works the other way round.

Come and have a rummage.

Pick something up. Ask what on earth it is. Laugh at an earring. Smell the soap. Find something that reminds you of somebody. Discover something you weren't looking for.

Buy it if you love it.

Or don't.

Sometimes it's simply nice to stop somewhere interesting for ten minutes and have a conversation.

Then the tablecloth gets folded, everything disappears back into cases, and the General Store trundles off until it's time to unpack somewhere else.

For now, however, its proprietor is drinking tea beside approximately four thousand square feet of screaming children and wondering whether another cup would constitute excessive optimism.

The General Store on Tour.

Currently rather more stationary than advertised. 😁

The Owl and the Pussycat x The General Store on Tour has now landed until 3pm at Hexham Racecourse if you fancy a trip out....gorgeous weather for some impulse buying...or tarot card reading....

Just putting this there...for reference and decoration 😁 You know where to find me...