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| From my drive to town on Friday. |
There it was on Thursday, posted on the national weather forecast for the first time this fall. A cold front moving in and that nasty little snowflake icon – Sunday night and Monday a 40% chance of rain mixed with snow. It is the end of October after all and many years we’ve had snow by now. Even so, the thought of it made me shiver in more ways than one. I see today that they’ve changed the forecast and now it’s just rain, but seeing that little snowflake in the forecast earlier in the week sent me into a flurry of activity.
We had our “Fall Break” this weekend. That meant a half day of school on Thursday and a day off on Friday. The weather was great on Friday and I spent as much time as I could finishing up anything I could think of outdoors. There wasn’t really much to do. There were leaves on our lawn and the Shillig’s and, although I thought I’d put the mower away until spring, I couldn’t resist one more chance to mow up the leaves before they get buried under snow and turn to slimy mush.
I spent a couple of hours processing and freezing the last of our pumpkins – 32 cups worth. I cleaned the back porch and brought all the potted plants that were out there into the house. Some of them, like the geraniums, I can coax into blooming all winter indoors. Others will eventually dry out and die, but I’ll try to keep them alive as long as I can. I also brought the bushels of onions into the kitchen. It’s getting too cold to store them on the back porch now.
I also cut my sunflowers. I didn’t plant these sunflowers. Back at the beginning of summer, some industrious chipmunks took seeds from my bird feeders and buried clumps of them all over the yard. When they sprouted, I thinned them and let them grow. They were beautiful in bloom and all of them set seed. I guess I should thank the chipmunks. I don’t know if the seed heads were completely ready to cut, but I knew that rain (and maybe snow) was coming, so I cut them anyway. I have them on the back porch drying. I will harvest the seeds in a week or two to feed to the birds.
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| Sunflowers drying on the back porch. |
I did some winterizing down at the barn. I closed the windows. I ran an electrical line down so I can plug in the heated waterer when I need to. Several weeks ago I asked our Amish friend, Irvin Gingerich, to make some alterations on the barn. The trusses in the upper part were configured in such a way that I was always bashing my head on them. I saw that if they were altered a bit the integrity of the roof would be the same and my skull would feel better. Irvin came by Friday afternoon and made the alterations. So the barn is ready for cold weather now.
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| The altered barn trusses - no more ducking. |
On Friday morning I drove into town to buy chicken feed. It was a lovely day and, although the maples are mostly bare, the oak trees are at their best right now. I don’t remember the oaks ever being this vibrant before. Their colors are not as bright as the maples, but the reds are dark and rich and the oranges are deep and smoky. I stopped to take pictures on the way to and from town.
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| On my drive to town. |
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| Oak trees on Route 49. |
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| Luddington Run on the Pusher Siding Road. |
On Saturday we went up to the temple. It’s a long drive – two and a half hours one way. We left the house early at 6:30 a.m. It was still dark outside. As we drove north, there was a very pretty sunrise. We stopped just outside of Hornell, New York, so I could take a picture of it. The drive across western New York to Palmyra is always beautiful. Although they are further north than we are, their fall comes later than ours due to the effect of Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes. Up there the maples, sumacs, and oaks are still decked with colorful leaves. We had a great experience at the temple. After we were done, I took a walk all around the grounds and took photos. It is a beautiful building in a beautiful place. I walked along the edge of the forest at the edge of the temple grounds. There is a stone wall there that Joseph Smith’s family built back in the 1820's when they lived there. On our way home, the weather changed and a cold rain began to fall.
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| Sunrise on our way to the temple. |
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| The Palmyra Temple, west side. |
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| The temple inscription. |
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| The temple from a distance. |
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| The old stone wall. |
We were about to purchase my ticket to Italy yesterday, but plans have changed. It has been difficult communicating with Daniel. We write him and he doesn’t respond for a few days, or a week. He finally wrote yesterday evening, just in time. It turns out that this isn’t the best time for me to go over. The farm is full of workers and there isn’t a spare bed. I thought I’d be a worker, not a guest, but that would mean applying to be a worker and I didn’t realize that. So I won’t be going to Italy. At least not until early spring. Daniel says the growing season there starts long before ours, so I could go over in March, when it is still winter in Potter County, and work on the farm then. That is, if Daniel is accepted into an apprenticeship program that allows him to stay in Italy that long. If he doesn’t get into the program, he’ll be coming home in December and I won’t be going to Italy at all, at least not to the farm. I’m a bit disappointed. I was actually all psyched up for the trip – a strange thing for me since I do not like to travel. Oh well.
It is cold and rainy here today. The gloom of the sky combined with the damp and the cold makes me want to curl up under a warm blanket and take a long nap. But dinner isn’t ready yet. And I still have to do the chores. After that, I will nap no matter what.
