Today is last day of October – Halloween, not a holiday we really do much with at our house. Our tradition has evolved to just decorate with jack-o’-lanterns, lay in a supply of candy, and watch scary movies. The candy is not for trick-or-treaters, we never get any here, but solely for our own consumption. The movies are usually classics, not too gory or wicked.
In preparation for the holiday, jack-o’-lantern carving began last Sunday night and went on for several days. I grew some very nice pumpkins this year. Miriam and Hannah laid claim to the ones they wanted, some big, some small, and the knives came out. Their masterpieces are on display on the front porch. The remaining uncarved pumpkins are being cooked, mashed, and frozen, to be used in pies, cookies, and bread.
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| Carving pumpkins up in the workroom. |
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| The finished jack-o'-lanterns. |
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| Lights out. |
Here in this houseful of adults we may not do much for Halloween, but the youngest generation of our family does. They all had great costumes this year. Harry Potter was a popular theme. Hazel dressed up as Hermoine Granger and June was Luna Lovegood. Mabel was a butterfly. The Utah branch of the Howe family also had a butterfly, Gwen. Ellie was a cat, Henry was Spiderman, and Joni joined in the fun as Maleficent.
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| The Thayns. |
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| The Utah Howes. |
Last week we had a lot of dreary weather – chilly, with overcast skies, and rain – sometimes very heavy rain. The mornings were so dark, I wondered sometimes if the sun was going to rise. As I watched the rain pour down, I thought how, if it had been just ten degrees colder, we would have forty inches of snow on the ground instead of the four inches of rain in the ground. In 2016 and 2010 we did have snow on the ground at this time. The only time during the week that we had a bit of sunshine was Wednesday afternoon through Friday morning. After that the gloom and rain returned. It looks like this coming week we have a chance for snow.
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| Dreary weather. |
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| This time ten years ago. |
On Wednesday I was not in school and, as the weather was not conducive for outdoor work, I worked indoors all morning. I had two sign orders to finish and while I waited for paint to dry, I worked in the kitchen. I began processing pumpkins. I had sixteen to do and managed to finish five. I also harvested my biquino peppers and pickled them. They are little pointed Brazilian peppers that are supposedly very delicious when pickled. They are very pretty. When I cut the plants, I thought they looked festive enough to be Christmas decorations. They made four small jars of pickled peppers. They are refrigerator pickles and they will be ready to try in ten days. I’m anxious to see what they taste like. Since I was canning peppers and had all the canning equipment out, I decided I might as well do a batch of raspberry jelly too. We are done picking raspberries now and had two bags of them in the freezer. I turned them into nine cups of jelly.
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| My biquino pepper plants. |
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| Biquino peppers ready to pickle. |
Thursday morning it was finally clear, but with the clear sky came cold. It was 25° and there was a hard frost. When I got home from school it had warmed to 55° and I went out to start clearing away all the dead plants. All the tender annuals – marigolds, zinnias, morning glories, petunias, and castor beans were severely damaged or dead. Most of them are in the compost pile now. The garden is starting to look a bit empty. Only the perennials are left and they look lonely. Later that afternoon Kurt and I drove up to Greenman Hill to borrow a brush hog. When we got back, he ran the brush hog and worked on cutting down the weed jungle on the edge of the orchard while I mowed lawn. I vowed that this really will be the last mowing of the year. We finished as it got dark. It was nice to have a few rainless hours to get some work done, but there is still a lot to do.
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| Frost blasted zinnias. |
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| Kurt mowing with the brush hog. |
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| Thursday, the loveliest evening of the week. |
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| Sunset on Thursday. |
On Friday I was not in school. The morning was chilly and cloudy and the forecast called for rain, but it hadn’t arrived yet, so I hurried out and did more work in the yard. I got out the brush hog and mowed the meadow and the tall weeds along the road. Just as I finished, the rain started, so I went indoors and resumed canning. I canned ten pints of applesauce and processed five more pumpkins. Later, when I went out to do the afternoon chores, it was pouring. As I ran down to the barn, I wondered why I don’t own a waterproof coat and a nice, sturdy umbrella. By the time I finished the chores and got back to the house, I was soaked.
On Saturday morning Stacey, Kurt, Miriam, Hannah, and I went to an auction. The owner of the Genesee Environmental Center died several weeks ago and they held an estate auction. It was a chilly, drizzly day. Most of the items being auctioned were outdoors and some of them were covered with tarps, but a lot of it was soggy. The Environmental Center was like a hoarders dream. There were a lot of people there milling around. There was so much stuff, most of which I would consider junk, but people were bidding eagerly. There was a great butterfly collection that I liked, but did not bid on. I don’t know what I would have done with it if I had bought it. The property itself, 21 acres with a pond and a stream, sold for $120,000. Our main reason for going was to see if we could buy a stone lantern we knew was there. We did bid and we won. It is now in the woodland garden by the pond. That was our one and only Saturday adventure. It rained off an on all day and I stayed indoors as much as I could (those chores!) and did next to nothing. Some days are like that.
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| The Genesee Environmental Center. |
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| Auction items out in the rain. |
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| The indoor auction. |
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| The butterfly collection. |
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| The stream behind the center. |
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| The stone lantern we bought in place by our pond. |
During the gloomy days last week, I consoled myself by starting to compile my winter reading list. As winter draws on and the outdoor world becomes less hospitable, I will spend a lot more time reading. My book list isn’t finished yet. It never really is. As the weeks and months plod on, I will add and delete books from it. Many new books will get dropped after I’ve read a chapter or two because they are so poorly written or just another rehash of an overused plot – something I find increasingly common these days. Other books will get added as I get new recommendations from other people and the different book websites I peruse. Many of the books on my list will be ones that I’ve read before that I want to revisit. Some books will come from the library. Most will come from our own shelves. We have a lot of books in our house. I did a quick estimate during a rainy moment of tedium and came up with about two thousand. Once upon a time, I belonged to several book clubs – The Easton Press, The Heritage Press, The Library of America, The Folio Society that sent me a new, beautiful, hard-bound book every month. I love well-made books and they take pride of place on our shelves. There are also many paperback books that we’ve collected over the years. I love being surrounded by books. Four rooms in our house are full of books – my bedroom, the living room, the music room, and the upstairs workroom. When people come into our house for the first time and see all the books, they usually ask me if I’ve read them all. I always say, not yet.
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| Books in the music room. |
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| Books in the workroom. |
The first book on my list this year is one I read many years ago. I saw it on the shelf and remembered that I enjoyed reading it but didn’t recall the finer details, so I decided to read it again. It came to me from The Folio Society sometime back in the 80's. The Folio Society is an English publishing house, founded in 1947. It produces beautiful hardback editions boxed in slip cases. I don’t belong to the Folio Society anymore (I say that with a little sob), but sometimes I go to their website (https://www.foliosociety.com/usa) just to drool. Anyway, the book I am reading right now is A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915 – 2011). (Its full title is A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube.) It is a non-fiction work, a memoir published in 1977, of the first part of Fermor's journey on foot across Europe in 1933/34 when he was just 18. I’m only a few chapters into the book, but I’m already caught up in its descriptions of Europe in the 1930's, that volatile period between the two World Wars, a world that would soon vanish forever in the violent convulsions of World War II. In fact, as Fermor walks across Germany, Hitler is already rising to power. When I finish that, I will move on to a paperback copy of the second part of his journey that I own, Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople: From The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates (1986). I have never read and do not own a copy of the book that covers the third part of his journey, The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos (published posthumously in 2013). I’ll see if I can find a copy and add that to my list. These are fascinating books and beautifully written, a great start to my winter reading list.
My list will be varied. There will be fiction (classic, modern, and sci-fi), and non-fiction (mostly history and gardening books). I want to put at least one Dickens novel on my list. I have his complete works, a set I got from The Oxford Press back in my rampant book buying days. There are twenty-one volumes in the set. It took me two years, but I read and loved all of them. Some of them, like David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Dombey and Son, I’ve read several times. But there are a few titles I’ve only read once that I’d like to read again. I just can’t decide which ones to put on the list. The titles up for consideration are Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend. It’s a tough decision. Maybe all of them will make the list. If the winter weather predictions are correct, I might need them all.
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| My prized set of Dickens. |
Today is another gloomy, overcast, rainy day. The sun shone for just a moment on the drive to church, highlighting the bits of color remaining on the hills. After that, the clouds took over again and remain. Now I’m looking forward to lunch and then a nap and then a week ahead with plans that may or may not happen depending on how accurate the forecast is – it goes rain, rain, frozen mix, partly sunny, rain, snow, rain – so I’m thinking I’ll get a lot of reading done. But then it’s November, so what can you expect?
