It's not that bad

It's that time of year again.

The wood has been cut and stacked (thank you dear), the pool has been drained, the trampoline taken down, the lawn chairs put away. Now we wait for the snow, which usually starts around Thanksgiving.

This is what we're burning now, pine and fir. It's pretty light and burns fast, which is good because the real cold hasn't hit yet. Now we have the fire turned down most of the time, so the wood burns more slowly. The pine and fir were generously donated to us by S and J, who still have a lot of downed trees on their property. We used to harvest our own, but our supply has dwindled. We have about 2 cords of this.

We also bought and had delivered 2 cords of a birch/tamarack (larch) mix, which is in the back row there. It's much heavier and denser so it burns longer. It's good to get this going with the lighter stuff and then throw on a birch yule log before bed to last through the night.We had more insulation put into the house this year, and J put in a bathroom heater. This morning it was 14 degrees on the thermometer, but I didn't know it till I went downstairs and looked.

Before the arctic air mass arrived, we had a few days of rain via the pineapple express. It was nice and mild and misty and moist. I imagine it's what Seattle feels like.

It was good to get all that moisture, but I can see how it would get old fast.

After the deluge, it was dry and windy, with the occasional bit of sun.

Rusty was pondering the universe here in the hot spot. Not 15 minutes later the clouds returned and it started to hail.

There isn't much color around anymore, everything is brown brown brown and grey and dark green, except for these bright spots:

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi - Bearberry

Willow?

Oregon grape with Bearberry

Gaillardia trying to bloom, better late than never.
It's cloudy and 41 degrees at 1:50 pm.

First Snow

The snow is here, for a bit. Rain is in the forecast later on.

J is putting lots of leaves on the garden and will till them in before the ground freezes. I hope.
It's 32 degrees at 3:30 pm, light snow falling. It's already too dark outside to take pictures.

Oh Happy Day

Spring has come in November!

The Color Kittens' experiments have come to life, the paint has spilled and it's mixing and turning red and blue into purple. Yahoo! And what's next?

But they had no green. "No green
paint!" said Brush and Hush.
And they wanted green paint, of course, because
nearly every place they liked to go was green.

There it is, everything I ever needed to learn about life in one Little Golden Book.

Here's to a bright and beautiful future.

It's 41 degrees, mostly cloudy at 1:00 pm.

Happy Halloween

Black cat (Pyewacket)Brown Echinacea

Sunflowers

Rye (cause of mental illness in Salem "witches"?)

All the grasses have gone to seed, ready for next year.

Poor flowers. But the oregano and other herbs are still healthy, despite temps in the teens at night. Herbs rule!
That's all folks.

Next...Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. A little preview...

Chickadee in a Christmas tree

Pine cones and Oregon grape
SnowberryIt's 1:00 pm and 50 degrees, sunny.

Winter is here

In case you live in the balmy areas, this is what it looks like on a cold October morning in Idaho. The greenhouse garden has finally surrendered, no more zucchini, sniff sniff. When the temps in October dip like this, it's always a rude shock. Wait--wasn't it just 80 a couple weeks ago? What happened? Now it only gets up to low 50s on sunny days, and nights are frigid: it was 14 degrees last night, 14. Where did the warmth go? I want to follow it, like the birds.

These Pine Siskins came with a flurry of activity to snack on the sunflowers. Looks like a happy family.

Well, I didn't get a good shot of the upside-down antics, their acrobatic tricks would be better to watch in a video.
If I were them, I'd fly south in a hurry.

What on earth is a meme?

A meme is like an internet virus. It's an idea or activity that spreads from person to person, kind of like a chain letter, but without the bad luck.

Janeywan is passing one around that's fun so I thought what the hey, why not?

___________________________________________________________

• Grab the closest book.
• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence, (not the fifth line, the fifth sentence).
• Post the text of the next two to five sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.
• Make sure you choose the nearest book to you, not the dearest.
• Tag five others to do the same.
  ___________________________________________________________
  

Here are my results for this experiment:





I picked up The Middle Moffat, by Eleanor Estes, which Slammy just did book report on last night at the computer. It's one of my favoritest books of all time so I was excited to see what the quote would be.


The fifth sentence: Everybody sat down around the shiny round table in the dining room.



Ok, this sounds like a good beginning, I thought, but then...



Mrs. Stokes sat opposite Mr. Stokes. Beatrice sat on one side. And Nancy and Jane, best friends, sat on the other side.
First they had vegetable soup. They ate this all right.



Hmm, phooey, we don't get to hear about Jane's lamb chop dilemma. I had to read the rest of the chapter so I could enjoy it again. I think I will have to read the whole book again. I noticed that Estes uses very short sentences, maybe that's one of her secrets. If I could write like her, I'd be pleased as punch. But could I ever come up with characters like The Mechanical Wizard, or The Oldest Inhabitant? I don't know. That woman was a genius. And so was the illustrator, Louis Slobodkin.



Perhaps vegetable soup should be on the menu tonight.



I'm tagging the people in my blog list, have fun! Or not...

October Surprise

All tucked in for the night. Thanks to the Js for helping me so often with this task.

It's October, and the garden is still going strong. That's the surprise. Not only that, but the weather today is beeeauuuutiful.

The sunflowers are really shining now. The deer haven't been around to eat them lately, I'm not sure why.

The chickadees were out this morning, singing their wheezy little song.

Rusty wasn't too impressed. "Aaaah shaddup!"Clear and 67 degrees on the cold side of the house at 12:30 pm, it'll be around 80 later on.