Bees on Campus. UGA Horticulture’s trial gardens behind Snelling Dining Commons welcomed visitors to an open house this evening (September 16, 2009). Wine flowed. Garden guru Dr. Alan Armitage gave tours in his signature wide-brimmed hat. Athens jazz ensemble Sonny Got Blue served up some audible delights to accompany the visual ones. Student artists displayed some of their works. And in the midst of it all, the bees on the evening shift busied themselves with their chores.

Cookie Cakes. Do you remember when the world was young and most of the cookie cakes you would ever eat were still before you and this particular cookie cake called out to you from a bright white box with a clear top on a skatepark bench on a crisp fall afternoon in Athens GA?

Farmers Market Near Season's End. As October begins its packing, and November’s ready to move in, the Athens Farmers Market at Bishop Park remains a popular place to start the weekend in our town, but a sprinkling of fallen leaves on the asphalt, a few empty booths, and farmers with time enough to juggle signal the approach of season’s end.

Flying Home. Tony "Doc“ McCutchen, whose infectious love of music, inexhaustible generosity, and unreserved commitment to his role as a teacher have touched so many lives not just in our town, but across the country and the world, will retire at the end of the fall semester of 2009 after 31 years as a member of the UGA Music faculty. On a recent October night, Doc took the stage at Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall, joining Steve Dancz and the UGA Jazz Ensemble for "Flying Home: A Salute to the Music of Lionel Hampton.“ Brilliant both on the vibes and the drums, Doc gave us all yet another musical gift to treasure. Doc has taken a faculty position at Jacksonville State in Alabama, but the McCutchens didn't sell their house in Athens, and they plan to be back for gigs and for the summers.

Holiday Concert. We accept that there are those who savor all that the holidays are. For us, however, the season sometimes seems not so much to "approach" as to bear down relentlessly. Happily, we've discovered over the years some genuinely delightful and even inspiring holiday events that we've weaved into our seasonal ritual. Not the least of these is UGA Music's Holiday Concert. When was the last time you heard live music that didn't merely entertain or intrigue you, but threatened to overwhelm you, gathering you up in a tsunami of joy? The Holiday Concert can do that. It's so popular that UGA schedules two performances -- one on Thursday and the other on Friday in early December.

October. There’s something to be said for each of the months. Even February. But October! Athens is glorious in October. Chilly morning air makes the simple act of breathing seem new again. Black labs jump and swirl and, if they take a notion, gallop across the yard. Acorns crackle under foot. A few trees, and then more and more, take up their palettes. Pumpkins congregate near the doors of supermarkets, clamoring mutely for the attention of young carvers and their moms. Candy corn and creepy costumes reappear to attend the sweetly scary rituals of the season. And the holidays shimmer on the horizon, still far enough away to be relished in the abstract. Shall we raise our mugs of hot chocolate in a toast to October?

Squirrels of Athens. I’ve opened a project file for a photo spread with the working title “The Squirrels of Athens,” featuring glamour shots of these stunning rodents who grace venues from Sandy Creek to North Campus to Watkinsville with their conservative, yet flamboyant sense of fashion (business gray, but look at those tails!), impish intelligence, and an irrepressible joie de vivre worn almost as a badge of defiance against a daily existence in which knowing the difference between a hawk and a handsaw is a matter of life and death.

Tinder Box Dog. "'Good-evening!' said the soldier, and he lifted his cap respectfully, for such a monster of a dog as this he had never before seen or heard of. He stood still for a minute or two, looking at him; then thinking, 'the sooner it's done the better!' he took hold of the immense creature [and] removed him…. Oh, what a sight of gold was there!" Hans C. Andersen. "The Tinder Box." Eastside Publix. Tuesday, September 29, 2009.

Word of Mouth. What this town needs is a place to go to hear -- or to deliver up -- the witness of the spoken word. A place where the air stirs with the rhythms and truths, or what passes for truths, or outright lies language carries along. A place for a new beat generation, or for the old one, or both. It's aborning, folks, upstairs at the Globe. First Wednesday of every month. 8 p.m. No cover. "Word of Mouth." Put together by Aralee Strange (pictured).