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b"Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.\\n\\xa0\\nS4E29 TRANSCRIPT:----more----\\n\\xa0\\nMark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark,\\nYucca: and I'm Yucca.\\nMark: and once again, it is time for us to talk about the autumnal equinox, one of the eight stations of the wheel of the year of holidays.\\nYucca: That's right. It just keeps turning and turning. So here we are.\\nMark: Here we are once again, you know, looking at The, the the calendrical arrival of autumn anyway. I mean, I I'm pretty clear that I'm into autumn here where I am already, and I think you are too, Yucca but,\\nYucca: though, because the beginning of autumn and the end of autumn are very, very different seasons here.\\nMark: yeah. I mean, autumn and spring are the transitional seasons, and they things change pretty radically during the, during their extent. Yeah, so, well, we can talk about kind of what tells us that autumn is coming, but we can also talk about the holiday, and what it means to us, what we call it, how we celebrate and kind of its positioning within the wheel of the year and how that relates to the things around it, and all that kind of stuff.\\nYucca: Sounds good. Well, let's start with names.\\nMark: Okay.\\nYucca: So, for me, the equinox, and of course it's one of the equinoxes, but it's pretty clear which equinox we're talking about during this time of year. And it's also first fall or first autumn,\\nMark: Mmhmm.\\nYucca: because here I look at the seasons like there's either eight seasons or there's two seasons.\\nMark: Mmhmm.\\nYucca: So there's the Because the traditional temperate four seasons, really as we were just saying, early or first fall and second fall are two very different seasons\\nMark: Mmhmm. Mmhmm.\\nYucca: But then there's also really, there's just the hot time of year and there's the cold time of year. And this is the transition between the hot into the cold. This is one of those, those gateway or door holidays. For me it feels like we're going from one season to the next and so it's a very busy season.\\nVery busy holiday, very busy season here.\\nMark: Sure. Yeah, you've got to get everything prepped and everything buttoned down for, for a cold winter.\\nYucca: That's\\nMark: Yeah I call this holiday Harvest. And of course it's not the only harvest holiday, but this, this is the time when kind of the cultural imagery of cornucopias and all that kind of stuff really, you know, starts to pop up in all the media and all of the winter vegetables are producing abundantly out of people's gardens and the earlier vegetables are pretty much petering out at this point.\\nThe, the grape crush. The grape harvest and crush is happening right at the point of the equinox, it starts usually in August but it extends, what happens is the whites get harvested first, and then the reds, and then there are what are called botrytis vines, which have the botrytis fungus growing on the berries.\\nAnd they create so they, they sort of shrivel and they get very, very sweet and concentrated in flavor. And those are used to make dessert wines and ports and things like that. So there's this, you know, there are several phases to the grape harvest and crush. And it's just... It's a lovely time. The leaves are changing in the vineyards and and in some of the trees around here, and there's a feeling of industriousness\\nYucca: hmm. Mm\\nMark: uh, you know, people have gone back to school, they've gone back to work, all that summertime playing is pretty much over now so there's just, it's just a, as you say, it's a very busy time, but it's also a very lovely time and so I call it harvest.\\nYucca: Yeah. And neither of us are in areas where we have lots of broadleaf trees that are churning, but I have a few here and it's just so lovely. to see the, to see them changing and watch that, that very traditional fall look start to, to start to happen. And there's a, there's a smell to it too. There's this very love"