It had been raining for days. Slick, cold, stay indoors kind of rain. Not the gentle mist-like rain of the northwest that caresses as you go from place to place, but the heavy rainfall of the northeast that soaks you unmercifully, making you run for shelter. It was truly the April showers that bring May flowers, and I was visiting my family in New York. It was six months after my father died. Just eleven days before Samhain last year, it felt like the veil between the worlds

Five years ago I took a cutting from a friend’s champagne grapevine and managed to successfully cultivate it in my front yard. Make sure you get enough root and give it something, like my chain link fence, to grow on. The first year, no grapes. I wondered if maybe I needed two vines so they could make plant love in order to bear fruit. But the next year proved that to be untrue and I delighted in watching the tiniest baby grapes form a few meager clusters. When Autumn roll