The year is moving too quickly. I’m at that point in the season where I’m done patting myself on the back for all the things I’ve accomplished and now am fretting over the things I haven’t done yet. The list is long. I never got around to painting the back porch where the paint is peeling off in large flakes – that will have to wait for next year now. I still haven’t fixed the bottom step on the front porch stairs that is slowly eroding away from the dripping rain gutter that I haven’t unclogged yet – I need to do both things before winter sets in. I haven’t readied the woodshed or the barn for winter yet. I’m not even finished planting fall bulbs. Time is running out. The weather is becoming more and more uncooperative.
For all my fretting, we did manage to get a few things done during the week. Monday was Columbus Day and we had no school. The weather was perfect and Josiah and I spent most of the day working outside. We stacked another load of firewood. We cleared and tilled the two vegetable gardens. We took apart the glass pepper boxes. We planted garlic. There’s still more to be done.
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| Josiah planting garlic. |
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| Gardens tilled. |
On Wednesday we drove out to Enos Schwartz’s metal shop in Bingham Township. We ordered some stove board from him and needed to pick it up. The stove boards are panels of reflective metal that we put behind the wood stove to keep the wall cool and reflect the heat back into the room. The whole family went along for the drive. We never miss a chance to take a drive on the back roads this time of year. The stove board works great.
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| The drive to Schwartz's shop. |
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| Schwartz's place. |
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| On the way home from Schwartz's. |
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| The view from the top of Gee Hill. |
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| The wood stove with new stove boards. |
We’re still harvesting a few things. We’ve been processing pumpkins all week long – pressure cooking them, mashing them, and freezing the mash. We’ll finish with that this week. A friend at school gave me a bag of beets and I canned those. There are still some tomatoes trying to ripen on the window shelves of the back porch. I managed to pick a basket of hazel nuts from the hazel hedge in the orchard before the jays and squirrels got them all. There was a good crop of them this year. There are about five nuts in each husk. They are difficult to extract, but I love them, so it’s worth the effort. I also pick our meager grape harvest. There is still kale, cabbage, and a bit of broccoli out in the garden. They get better after a few frosts, so I won’t harvest them just yet.
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| Hazel nuts. |
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| My sad grape harvest. |
The autumn leaves are pretty much done now. There are a few beautiful trees here and there, but most of the maples are bare. The oaks, always the last of the hardwoods to turn, are the predominant color now with shades of smoky red and rusty orange. The larches, the only deciduous conifers here, have just begun to change. The sumacs are still showing off in some places. Most people consider sumacs a weedy nuisance. They spray them, cut them down, and grub them up. I like them. Spring and summer they give the fields and roadsides a tropical look with their bright green compound leaves. And in the fall they dazzle us with their incandescent orange, yellow, and red leaves. Two kinds of sumac grow here, staghorn sumac and smooth sumac. I have a patch of smooth sumac down by the barn that I encourage to spread. So autumn is winding down. All in all, it wasn’t a spectacular year, but pretty enough.
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| Sumacs on the roadside. |
Today, after more than 15 years, I was extended a release from my calling as first councilor in our branch presidency. I was called to that position right after we moved here in 2000. I first served with Pres. Brian Ludlow for four years and, after the Ludlows moved, under Pres. Kurt Shillig. Kurt is still the branch president, a position he’s held since they moved here in 2004. He’ll have two new councilors now. I’ve also been the Gospel Doctrine teacher that whole time too. It’s not uncommon for members of our tiny branch to have multiple callings. They didn’t release me from that calling and I hope they never do. I love teaching Sunday School.
The weather forecasters were predicting our first snowfall this weekend. Snow in October is not uncommon here, but I refuse to accept it as normal. A storm blew in on Friday afternoon. It rained, it hailed, and it brought cold air. Saturday morning there was hard frost and a few snowflakes on top of the leaves on the lawn. Later in the day a few big snowflakes fell. But it all melted right away. Last night the temperature dipped into the 20's and this morning there was a light dusting of snow. It’s all gone now and I hope it stays away until after Thanksgiving.
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| Snow dusted cabbage. |
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| Rose hips in this morning's snow. |
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| Snow on the stonecrop. |
Next weekend we have a short Autumn Break at school. We have a half day on Thursday and are off on Friday. We are using the time off to go visit Rachel, Tabor, Hazel, and June in Tennessee. Josiah and I have never been there, though Stacey and Hannah have. We’re looking forward to it. Next week’s journal will be delayed until we get back. I’ll tell you all about it then.
