I started to write this yesterday, but after some email difficulties followed by the power going down several times (including as I was posting the third photo below) and not getting through to people on the phone. Finally gave up, turned the computer off and went to my folks place and made pizza and had a nice lunch. They are harvesting black walnuts and hickory nuts as well as the carrots and turnips still in the garden. It is Wedensday already! No frost this morning, some clouds and a bit of fog instead. Before the rain set in yesterday afternoon, had three frosty mornings with sunny, warm days. The leaves are starting to fall but there is still a lot of color.
This is a photo of sunrise Monday morning (Halloween, October 31, 2005):
It was beautiful out on Monday, after the sun came out was able to do more digging in the flower beds with a trowel, sifting the earth with my hands and piling weeds for the compost. The stones get stacked on the edge of the bed.
Figured that the winter freeze-thaw cycles will help break up the clods and the remaining weeds will be easier to pull with the earth loosened up this spring.
With the sun and breeze, was a great laundry day too. Hung two loads out on the clotheslines. Starting to wash and put away summer things now. Also glued down the veneer on one corner of the table. That required clearing it of the stuff that I had been storing there instead of filing. The filing cabinet is still sitting near the front door where we moved it to clean the carpets.
It is amazing that a person can take so much pleasure in mundane tasks like this, but there it is. Like baking bread, can do them in small bits with rests and snacks in between.
I encountered a number of wooly worms sunning themselves along the edge of the the flower bed by the skirting on the south side of the trailer. Most of them are rich brown in the center with black on the ends.
In addition to being cute and fuzzy with their teddy bear colors and galomping caterpillar ways, they are considered weather prophets — right up there with the height of hornets nests, etc.
Most of them have the usual distribution of black-brown-black, but I also found a larger one who was solid black. It is my understanding of the folklore that means a very harsh winter. Now these caterpillars seem to be in close communication, perhaps partisanship has now extended to the insects?
Sunday morning frost:
Ling Ling still wants to go out when I open the door, but he doesn’t go far when his paws hit the frost crystals.
On Sunday afternoon we went to a family event hosted by one of my cousins on my mom’s side of the family. Their house is on a big wooded lot outside of Dayton, not too far from the Amish country where we went the Sunday before. The leaves were still quite colorful and my mom especially likes the look of the farms there.
Good conversation, good food, and four generations of relatives ranging from an infant not quite 4 months old to octogenarians. I hadn’t seem some of my cousins since they were children, now most have children of their own.
