Gorey On My Mind.

Fall firsts.

First day of school. First cool breeze. First game of the season.

First day of fall and the first chapter in the next round of Confessions.

Fall also (there's that word...also), for the first time in Florida, hosted an Edward Gorey art exhibit at the Orlando Museum of Art. At summer's august tag-end, the OMA displayed nearly 180 of Gorey's original drawings, first edition prints, magazine and book covers, envelope doodles and Gorey-esque stuffed dolls.

Joined by three friends-slash-Gorey fans (I advise against going to a Gorey exhibit with any company less than 'fan') and one buttercup of a very patient baby, we quoted, pointed, omg'd, c'mere'd, and generally absorbed every elegantly framed print and glass case of the display. Took us approximately two hours, another forty-five minutes in the gift shop, and days of post-discussion about the deep meaning in the reproduction prints we carefully chose for purchase or the grateful display of a cherished Gorey drawing at the exhibit.

Over the next month, I took a renewed interest in my Gorey library of 'weird little books' as my husband calls them. When it came time for fall Confessions, no title came to me (Thirdflysacharm just didn't cut it.) So, with Gorey on my mind, I wondered "WWGD?" The man had four published volumes of collected works, and rather than 'more' and 'further' at the beginning of his subsequent titles, he looked toward the end, and by his third collection, he had used 'also'. Shortening my title to 'Butterfly Confessions', I added the 'Also.' Butterfly Confessions Also. Has a ring, eh? But would anyone get it? And what did it have to do with my garden really? I hadn't looked at Gorey's Amphigorey Also in ages, so I browsed my bookshelf for it, and on the cover...

Butterflies. Twelve darkly glorious drawings of the weirdest little butterflies put to pen-and-ink paper. They are all of the same caterpillar body, rather like a Scottish terrier with no ears, each with full-flight wings, even one looking suspicously like a monarch butterfly. The cover, the back, the spine, the endpapers, all illustrated with bflies from the mind of Gorey.

And I got it. Really.

So now you have it. The third round - that being Butterfly Confessions Also.

Here's a look at the the butterfly garden in a fall state of mind...

...a close-up of the bundle of yellow at left in the above picture...

A lone monarch visited this quiet, tropical September morn.

Happy Fall to her, and to Confessions readers also!