Happy Tuesday,

I left our flagship South Burlington store last night with Owen in the passenger seat, perfect doggy posture and tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, and took the long way back to my home in Moretown. There aren’t many signs of Fall yet, but sumac is beginning to turn brilliant red and the apple trees are sagging under the weight of larger and more fruit than in past years.

Ed spoke yesterday of his first taste of this year’s apples, a Ginger Gold, one of my very favorite varieties that happens to be completely unsuitable for winter storage. With corn still available, tomatoes unaffected by late season blight in their prime, and apples coming into season, I’ve found the suddenly low temperatures have me craving the autumn months. I’m ready for butternut squash, hardy post-frost collard greens, and braised food.

Despite the cool temperature, I swam with Owen in the Mad River over the weekend. He still smells a bit skunky when he gets wet, and if experience has anything to do with it, I can safely say he’ll smell in February when he’s wet from melted snow.

Snow Leopard is here and I have it on my MacBook Pro. It hasn’t been long enough for me to form a strong opinion of this very significant release of Mac OS X, and no third parties support the 64-bit architecture quite yet (at least that I know of) so the speed gains are all in the Apple iApps as far as I can tell. We’ve long known there won’t be any new features, but Snow Leopard appears to be a solid beginning to the next chapter of the Mac OS’s evolution.

Enjoy this issue, and keep in touch.

Matt
matt@smalldog.com