Many people who live year-round in Sullivan County will tell you that September and October are their favorite months here. It's hard not to be suddenly jolted awake to the passage of time as the forests around us suddenly change color.

The heat of the summer and the crowds of visitors are memories now; a sweet melancholia hangs in the air as one green bough after another turns russet or yellow or hangs denuded of all its bright foliage.

Another summer, come and gone! New Year's awakens a similar feeling. Plants sprout from seed, grow green, bloom, bear fruit and molder, and we are reminded of the mysterious natural cycles we ourselves are subject to. It is a moody, pensive, and delicious time.

Seize the day: this is surely the lesson each autumn teaches. Do it now, and while you can pursue that dream. The other day, acting on a standing invitation, I drove up to an immaculate 1840's farmhouse on Horseshoe Lake Road.

The long white house stands somewhat back from the road in front of a line of rapidly-reddening sugar maples. The owners, Doreen and Manuel Gonzalez and daughter Amanda and husband Joseph Gaeta, are in the midst of realizing an amazing life dream, transplanting a bit of California into Sullivan County.

Back of the big house is an expanse of well-trimmed field where rows of lavender are growing. “Manny and I decided why wait until retirement to do this?” Doreen explains. The NJ family began to search for rural acreage after 9/11 and finally found and bought this 14 acre farm back in 2016. Quite a bit of everything is now under tillage.

Some of the Lavender bushes are traditional English lavender (Lavandula augustifolia) while others are a hybrid (Lavandula x intermedia) whose flowers and leaves are intensely fragrant and repel deer. Doreen has set up a workshop at one end of the field where she dries the leaves and flowers. - Next to the lavender, there is what may be Sullivan County's very first vineyard full of Marquette wine stocks. Its type developed at the University of Minnesota to withstand cooler climes and shorter growing periods.

One day soon, the family hopes, these vines will produce Sullivan red wine, and September/October will be the time when the grapes are brought in to be crushed in their skins and ferment. Hope, hard work, determination, and a bit of climate change do their part! Good luck, neighbors! We look forward to the day when we will sip Horseshoe Lake vintages deep into the summer night…

Jonathan Hyman (new President of the Smallwood Civic Association) and I spoke. He reports the newly-elected Board have seized the day and are working hard. Next week he will send out a President's Message to everyone in the Association.

Since not everyone who lives in Smallwood is part of the Association, stay tuned; I'll report on the SCA again soon.