Autumn Letters — the journal

She’s the Goose

Table

How the table gets set, what goes on it, and who it gets set for.

A long dining table set for eight, tapered candles down the centre and an autumn floral runner.
A single place setting with a botanical beet plate, striped napkin and candlelight.
A close view of the centrepiece: dahlias, garden roses, fern and lit tapers.

October

Eight people, one runner, and nothing that has to stay hot.

The runner was built in the morning and left alone. Everything served was room temperature or came out of one pot. The only thing that happened at seven o’clock was lighting the candles.

What the table is set with→

A long table set with autumn-patterned plates, linen napkins in leather rings and a runner of sunflowers and dark red foliage with white tapers.
A place setting of stacked green leaf-pattern plates on a hammered silver charger, a linen napkin in a leather ring, gold flatware and a crystal glass.
Setting white tapers into the sunflower runner on the long table, place settings with linen napkins on either side.

Autumn

Sunflowers down the middle, and every candle lit.

A runner of sunflowers and deep red foliage with white tapers standing straight up out of it. Bread on the table, one big bowl to pass, and linen napkins in leather rings. The flowers are from The Madison Flower Shop and Garden Center.

What the table is set with→

A round wooden table seen from above, set for three with white plates, wood chargers and a low arrangement of white lilies and blue delphinium.

A round table for four. Wood chargers, white plates, and one low arrangement so people can actually see each other.

A wide white ceramic vase of ranunculus, tulips and lilac on rumpled linen.

One vase, one market bunch, one afternoon. Nothing here was arranged by anyone who knows how to arrange flowers.

A round wooden table seen from above, set for four with floral plates on green leaf-pattern chargers and woven mats, amber glasses, and a small bunch of sunflower, hydrangea, calla lily, celosia and marigold in the middle.

The round table, set for four. Floral plates on green chargers, amber glass, and one small bunch in the middle: a sunflower, hydrangea, calla lily, celosia and marigold.

A close place setting with stacked white plates, gold flatware and smoke-grey pressed glass.

Gold flatware, smoke-grey glass, and a linen napkin washed enough times to have gone soft.

A close view of hydrangea, ranunculus, lilac and tulips in a spring arrangement.

Hydrangea, ranunculus, lilac. Cut short, so the whole arrangement sits below the eye line.

Seen from above, a runner of sunflowers, spider mums, pink hydrangea, an orange calla lily and greenery, white tapers lit among the flowers.

Sunflowers, spider mums, hydrangea and one calla lily, laid flat with the tapers set in among them.

An overhead grazing board ringed with eucalyptus and pink chrysanthemum on pale stone.

Still the answer

The board is the easiest way to feed eight people well.

Nothing is cooked, nothing is timed, and it can be built two hours before anyone arrives. Buy three cheeses you already like and stop deliberating.

The Table, in The Edit→

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