winter months. And this month's RG Magazine has some bright ideas to lighten up the winter in its Fall Homes and Gardens issue.

The October issue, available free with tomorrow's edition of The Royal Gazette , focuses on lighting with ideas and hints from top local designers, a selection of great floor and table lamps from local stores and turns the spotlight on lighting expert Romano Erba, senior architect at OBM, who makes his own halogen lamps.

As the months get cooler, it's time to warm up in front of a roaring fire. In this issue, you will find a selection of fireplaces that work in traditional and modern homes, even ones without chimneys! Gardeners, however, will relish the cooler, wetter weather and Peter Carpenter gives you some tips on starting your own vegetable patch and preparing compost.

If you're already beginning to suffer from the winter blues, take a trip down the Mississippi with travel writer Ahmed ElAmin as he follows the Delta Blues trail to discover the birthplaces and stomping grounds of legendary musicians like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker.

Bringing with it a late summer splash of colour, impressionism comes to the fore this season with three art galleries holding impressionist exhibitions, the largest of which is the Bermuda National Gallery's, Light, Air and Colour: American Impressionist Paintings from the Collection of The Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts. Patricia Calnan writes about the influence of European impressionists on American artists at the end of the last century.