The week began with a flurry of activity that continued on through the rest of the week. Rachel and her girls arrived on Sunday afternoon. Hazel, June, and Mabel combined with Kurt, Vance, Ava, Cash, and Grant, the Shillig children next door, made for a lot of energy and activity. Every morning Hazel and June were up early doing their school work so they could spend as much time as possible playing with their cousins. During the day much time was spent riding the Shillig’s electric motorcycles. Sometimes we had meals at our house, sometimes at the Shillig’s. When they weren’t eating or sleeping, there was lots of playing, swinging, running, and jumping. Almost every night Uncle Kurt put on a little fireworks show.
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Cousins.
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Hazel and June and morning schoolwork.
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Motorcycle time!
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Florence on the swings.
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A meal at our house.
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A meal at Shillig's house.
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There were all sorts of excursions, but I was not a participant in most of the fun and frolicking. The cold I caught last week continued to linger with a bad cough and I thought it best to take it easy all week. I spent a lot of time upstairs working on barn quilt orders. I joined in the activities when I could and participated vicariously through photos when I couldn’t. On Monday they all went on a hike on the old railroad grade. That night Stacey and Miriam took the children on a Sasquatch and Unicorn hunt through the orchard and the yards with hot cocoa and cupcakes afterward.
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Hiking on the railroad grade.
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Florence.
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On the railroad grade.
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Getting ready for a Unicorn/Sasquatch hunt.
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Cupcakes after the hunt.
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On Tuesday they cleaned the Raymond Cemetery in the afternoon. Later they drove up to Rose Lake, the only natural lake in Potter County, for a nature walk around the lake.
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Cash helping at the cemetery.
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At the cemetery cleanup.
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At Rose Lake.
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Exploring nature at Rose Lake.
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On Wednesday there were lots of things going on. I went to my chiropractor that morning and got an adjustment and that helped a lot. I really miss the days when my father gave us adjustments regularly. Irvin Gingerich came by and worked on the front porch roof some more. He is not finished yet, he still has to put up the rain gutters and down spouts, but it looks good. Wednesday afternoon, the gang went back out to Rose Lake for another nature/Sasquatch walk. They saw a bear, but Bigfoot did not make an appearance.
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Phase one of the porch almost done.
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Back to Rose Lake again.
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Armed for a Sasquatch hunt.
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June.
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Florence.
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The fall colors continued to delight us all week even as they faded away. The maples are just about done, but the late trees – the oaks and larches, are just beginning. The weather was fine most of the week, the sort of classic weather we hope for in October. The days were mild, the nights cold. The sun still has power to warm, but not with the intensity it had in summer. Its light, coming to us on its longer slant, seems to tint the world in tones that make the rich colors of the autumn landscape glow. As soon as the sun goes down, the earth cools quickly. Most nights we have frost now.
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The changing trees.
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My maples almost bare.
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A bit of fall color.
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I took a walk around the property on Thursday morning before everyone was up and things were still quiet. It was a pretty morning. I walked through the orchard and the gardens and the meadow. The orchard seemed empty with the wind blowing whistling through the trees. The apple trees are losing their leaves. Some of them are completely bare already. There are still a few apples high up in a few trees that were too high to pick. The hazel hedge went bronze and then bare as the wind stripped it of its leaves. The jays have taken most of the nuts, which is fine. They love them and I love to watch them steal them.
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The orchard.
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The hazel hedge.
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The flower gardens have gone to rest now and I’m done working in them. I did not trim them down this year, so there is still some verticality there, but it is just the bare bones of the faded perennials. The colchicums are in decline, looking ragged, but still pink enough to make me smile. And everywhere there are leaves. The wind blew hard from Wednesday on through the weekend and shifted them in drifts and eddies. It brought down leaves from my own trees and carried more to me from the neighbors’ trees. The flowerbeds are full of leaves, banked up against any stem tall enough to stop them. The lawn is covered with them. I’ve raked them up several times and ground them up for compost. I also have a pile to burn when the wind stops, as I do every year, just for the nostalgia of smelling the smoke.
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Drab flowerbeds.
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A flock of pine siskins showed up at the bird feeders on Thursday morning. I was surprised to see them. They spend their summers far to the north. We usually don’t see them until later in deep winter. In mild winters we sometimes don’t see them at all as they stay further north. I hope their arrival isn’t a sign of a hard winter ahead. The wooly bear caterpillars (larva of the Isabella tiger moth) we’ve seen indicate a mild winter. According to folklore, the wider the middle rust colored band and the less black on the ends, the milder the winter will be. Let’s hope the wooly bears are right.
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Pine siskin (not my photo).
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Hazel and a wooly bear.
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On Thursday morning the Shillig gang plus Miriam went up to Palmyra to visit the Church History sites. They were gone all day. The sites are closed, there are no tour guides, but you can still walk around. Miriam said there was no one else there and it was nice. They went to the Hill Cumorah, the Smith Farm, and through the Sacred Grove.
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At the Smith farm.
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Going into the Grove.
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In the Sacred Grove.
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Kurt and Julie with their grandchildren in the Grove.
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Rachel and the girls also left for home on Thursday morning. As it always happens, the house seemed to collapse into quietness when they left. We will be seeing each other again this coming weekend and that will be good.
On Friday I couldn’t take sitting at home any longer. The Shillig crew planned to go to a park called Rock City Park up in Olean, New York, and I decided to go with them. Rock City is a geological formation of huge boulders of quartz conglomerate. We followed a trail down through the fissures and among the cracks and cliffs of the rock. It was very impressive.
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Rock City.
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Exploring Rock City.
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At Rock City.
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Colorful leaves at Rock City.
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Yesterday was a perfect October day. It was sunny and warm, in the 70's. I was feeling much better and I couldn’t resist being out in the yard all day. Stacey was there with me most of the day. It was nice. We did some tidying up around the front porch construction site. We worked on dismantling parts of the pig pen. We emptied and cleaned out the feeder and the waterer and put them in storage down in the barn. We took down the tomato fences and put them away. I tilled parts of the garden. We worked on the part of the woodland garden where the fire pit is. I tilled it, Stacey, Miriam, and Cash picked up rocks and then planted grass seed. It was very windy all day, but it was a perfect wind that blew all the leaves off the lawn and into better places. As the day ended, I wondered how long it will be until we see such days again. It looks like colder, wetter weather is on the way.
While we were working, I noticed that one of the autumn events I often forget to look for was underway. Ten years ago I dug up two little witch hazel trees (Hamamelis virginiana) up in the woods and planted them in the woodland garden. For years they were just there, growing slowly, not much to notice. Then two years ago in the fall I noticed a few yellow flowers on them. Ever since then they have bloomed every fall and every year there are more flowers. This year they are full of flowers and they look lovely. Witch hazels bloom in the fall and then hold their seeds for until the following fall when the seed pods explode and shoot the seeds as far as thirty feet away. Although my trees have bloomed for several years, I’ve never seen any seed pods. Maybe this year.
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My witch hazels blooming.
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The Shilligs all left this morning after church. They are driving down to visit Gettysburg. They will spend the night there and tour the battlefield tomorrow and then head over to visit the Thayns. Kurt and Julie will come back home, but Chase and his family will head west on their drive home to Saint George. With them gone, things will be very quiet here.
It’s cooler today, but still sunny. The maples that still have their leaves are bright and beautiful. We admired them on our drive to and from church. Tomorrow is Columbus Day and there is no school. It looks like it’s going to be a rainy day, but that’s okay. I don’t have anything I need to do outdoors. Then on Tuesday I’m back in school again and things will be back to normal again. Well, as normal as anything is these days.
