After a weekend away last week, I began the week with an urgent feeling of needing to get things done. Even just a few days away made me feel like I was far behind in my schedule, headed for a season I was not prepared to face. I suppose that feeling was heightened by my first glance at the thermometer that Monday morning. It was 18°, our first drop into the teens. It gave a truly winter feel to that dark morning. And I had so much that I needed to get done.
When the sun finally came up, the day was bright and clear, but it took a long time for things to warm up. Having been away, I had to go out to check the state of things. There was heavy frost. I went to the barn, looked in at the coop, threw some scratch to the chickens, and made sure their water wasn't frozen. Then I walked out to the pigpen. They were snuggled down in their straw bed. I was quiet so as not to disturb them. If they heard me, they'd want food and I wasn't ready to feed them. On my way back to the house, I walked past the lily pond. It was covered with a crust of ice. Then I went back indoors and waited, watching the thermometer, running through the list of things I wanted to do. I could have just bundled up and gone out into the cold to work, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The forecasters said the day would warm to 50° and I was going to hold them to it and wait for some warmth.
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| Ice on the lily pond. |
I decided to do something warm indoors while I waited. I made applesauce. We'd spared two buckets of Calville Blanc D'Hiver apples from the cider press. One was so Stacey could can pie filling. The other was for me to turn into applesauce. I spent the morning in the warm kitchen with two big kettles full of chopped apples bubbling on the stove. The smell was amazing. By 11:00 a.m. they had cooked down and were soft. I turned off the heat and let them cool a while and then put them through the mill. I had a choice to either can or freeze-dry the applesauce. I chose freeze-drying because it was easier. I didn't have to sterilize jars and lids and haul out the canner. I just spread the applesauce on baking trays and put them in the freezer. At some point they will go into the freeze-dryer, but right now there is a queue of things lined up, so they will have to wait their turn. It was a good way to spend a cold morning.
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| Making applesauce. |
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| Trays ready to go into the freezer. |
At noon the temperature outdoors hit 45° and I gave up. I put on my heavier barn coat, dug out a pair of fleece-lined work gloves, and went out to work. I wanted to clean out all the buckets we'd used during the apple harvest, but the hose was still frozen, so I moved on to other tasks. I still needed to do all my winterizing work in the barn, but the first part of that was tilling up the coop floor and I still couldn't get the tiller to start. Tosh came over later and he couldn't get it started either. So that project went to the bottom of the list. Instead, I did a quick mowing of the yard to grind up fallen leaves.
Next I decided to tackle cleaning off the back porch to make room for the firewood we haven't acquired yet. I had two large potted plants, my osmanthus and the night-blooming jasmine, still on the back porch that needed to come into the house. I pruned the jasmine back and put it in the living room. The osmanthus is a big four foot tall bush. I first encountered osmanthus in Japan and loved the scent of the flowers. It's too cold for it to live outdoors year round here, so I keep it in a pot and bring it indoors every winter. In the twenty years I've had it, it has never bloomed and I only just discovered why last year. Each year when it was time to bring it indoors, I pruned it back. But osmanthus blooms on the previous year's growth and unwittingly, I cut all of that off every year. So I don't prune it anymore and it's gotten so big, there's hardly a place for it in the house. And it still hasn't bloomed for me. I think this will be the last year I wait. If it doesn't bloom next year, I'm going to leave it outside at the mercy of the elements. Gardening can be cruel.
Miriam and Hannah began their pumpkin carving that evening. They come up with some very clever ideas. While they carved, we watched a movie. The traditional pumpkin carving movie is E.T., but there were plans to watch that later in the week, so we chose another favorite movie, Super 8.
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| Carving pumpkins. |
Tuesday morning it was very cold again. I heard the furnace come on at 3:00 a.m. and it stayed on. It was 19° when I got up. When I came downstairs after my shower, the furnace was still on and I stood over the grate in the dark to dry off and warm up. I like to do that on cold mornings when the furnace cooperates. Cold mornings seem to move slowly. Or maybe it's just me that's moving slowly. I tend to hover near any source of heat, the furnace grate, the heater by my desk, the stove in the kitchen. We haven't started using the woodstove yet, but that's about to change. We wanted to hold off until all the work in the living room was finished. I've started collecting twigs and sticks from the yard to use for tinder. I used to send the children out to do that. Now it's my job.
Speaking of the furnace, we have a little problem with ours right now. Our floor furnace sits under a metal grate where the living room, dining room, and music room meet. It is encased in a metal box that hangs down into the cellar. Because of the open grate, things sometimes fall into the furnace, but they have to be small enough to fit through the grate. Stacey vacuums the bottom of the furnace regularly. But something got into the furnace box, a mouse we suspect, and died and is under one of the heating chambers where we cannot reach it. We don't know how it got there. It couldn't fit through the grate and the metal box is completely enclosed. It has been decomposing for a week now and every time the furnace comes on, for the first ten minutes or so, we smell it. It will go away eventually when the mouse, or whatever it is is reduced to dust, but in the meantime, we have to suffer with the stink.
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| The furnace grate. |
I had a doctor's appointment Tuesday morning. More poking and prodding and then waiting to hear the results. When I got home from that, I went outside to work despite the cold. The sunshine was bright, so I just pretended there was some warmth coming from it. I worked some more on preparing the barn for winter. The hose wasn't frozen, so I washed out the buckets, took them down to the barn, matched them to their lids, and stacked them in one of the bays on the top floor of the barn. Now I need to work on filling them with feed. Next, I ran an extension cord down to the barn, anticipating the time when I'll need to plug in the water heaters. I also ran an extension cord out to the driveway fence so we can plug in Christmas lights when the time comes. After that, I raked leaves to the roadside and burned them. Burning leaves is a perfect thing to do on a cold and breezy autumn day. At the end of the day, I felt a little more prepared for winter, but only a little.
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| Empty feed buckets waiting to be filled. |
Miriam and Hannah finished carving their jack o'-lanterns that evening and set them on the front porch. That's the only decorating we do for Halloween.
Wednesday was cold, of course. And we had weather on the way, cold rain expected for the rest of the week starting that afternoon. I wanted to get some work done before it arrived, but spent most of the day going to and from my acupuncture appointment. After all these weeks of driving to Olean for these appointments, I still haven't gotten used to the time it takes to travel the fifty miles – an hour each way. When my appointment is in the late morning, as it was that day, it eats up most of my day.
When I finally got home, I thought I'd go out and work. I donned my warm barn coat and headed out to see what task I felt inspired to undertake. It was cold and windy. Nothing inspired me. Everything I looked at I thought to myself, "Yeah, that can wait until spring." So I did just the essential chores, took care of the chickens and pigs, and then retreated to my greenhouse bench to sit in the sun out of the wind for a while. But not for long. The clouds destined to bring us rain began to move in and my time in the sunshine came to an end.
It rained hard through Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. The rain came rattling down on a brisk north wind. It sounded like wet pebbles hitting the house and it woke me several times during the night. I sat in the gloom Thursday morning and considered the day. I'm still going through garden withdrawal. My indoor entertainment inventiveness hasn't kicked in fully. There are books to read, music to listen to, movies to watch, projects to begin, but my brain and my body still want to be outside. All those unfinished jobs beckon to me. The bitter rain made the world seem a sodden, soggy mess. I fidgeted, paced around the house, tried this and that to distract me – read a few chapters in my book, listened to a bit of Brahms, watered my houseplants. Nothing satisfied me for very long. Finally, I decided to do some family history. Voilà! Just what I needed. I ended up spending the rest of the morning and afternoon doing research while listening to Brahms (my go to composer for pure autumnal musical bliss).
My mother introduced me to family history when I was in my early teens. She began doing research shortly after joining the church in 1951. By the time I got involved, sometime around 1971 or 72, she had amassed a lot of information – pedigree charts, family group sheets, photographs, and some original documents, all compiled in what was then the state-of-the-art genealogical format, her Book of Remembrance. I began my excursion into genealogy by copying out by hand all of her information into a Book of Remembrance of my own. Then together we began doing research, sending for documents, and visiting libraries. It was slow but fascinating work and I loved it. It became one of my great passions. Now, fifty-three years later, the world of family history research is entirely different thanks to technology. I can sit at my computer at my desk in remote Gold, Pennsylvania, and search the world for information via the internet. And I still love doing it.
I went down to do the chores early that afternoon during what I hoped would be a sufficient lull in the rain. It wasn't. There were a few chickens out in their yard and I threw them some scratch. Then I went into the upper part of the barn and filled their feeders. As soon as I finished, before I could go down to collect the eggs, the rain came pouring down. I didn't want to get drenched, so I waited where I was. While I waited, I did a bit of cleaning. There's always something to clean in the barn. Dust accumulates at an amazing rate. And anyone who has inhabited a barn knows all about the strength and durability of spider webs. The spiders are gone now that the cold has come, but their webs are still everywhere. I swept up what I could easily reach. Then the rain let up a little and I made a dash for the coop and then the house and only got a bit wet.
Miriam and Hannah left on Thursday afternoon to go down to the Thayn's house. They wanted to spend Halloween with the children and take them trick-or-treating. They planned their costumes, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from James and the Giant Peach. They did a great job. They stayed for a long weekend and will be home later this evening. So Stacey and I spent the weekend, just the two of us.
The Coudersport Theater had a special showing of E.T. the Extraterrestrial on Thursday, the eve of Halloween. In case you don't know, the action in E.T. takes place around Halloween. Stacey and I planned to go on a date. I first saw E.T. forty-three years ago (hard to believe) when a few friends and I braved the long, long line to see the midnight premier showing at the Pacific Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Stacey was on her mission in Italy at the time. Later, after she got home, she and I watched it together and it was the first time I saw her cry. It was the part where E.T.'s heart light starts to glow after we thought he was dead. I took great comfort in knowing that a movie could make her cry. I cry all the time at movies, but Shilligs are notorious for being cold-hearted when it comes to that sort of thing. Show emotion? Heaven forbid! So I have fond associations with the movie. The showing was at 7:00 and was free. We didn't know how many people would show up and we decided ahead of time that if the theater was too crowded, we wouldn't stay. When we got there, we could see right away that there were too many people, by that I mean children who don't know how to behave properly in a theater. They can't sit still and they make too much noise. So we turned around and came home to spend a quiet evening together.
Friday was chilly, blustery, and rainy. Another day given over to restlessness. Stacey was at work all day. Miriam and Hannah were gone. I was home alone. I still haven't found my Post Gardening Season Groove. I read for a while. Did some more family history. Listened to music, Bach this time. Read a little more. Listened to more music – switched to big band to bring some bounce to the quiet house. I tried to find a good movie to watch, but nothing appealed to me. I went back to doing family history. The rain continued off and on and the wind moaned and howled in the bare branches of the trees all day.
The rain paused around 2:00 p.m., so I hurried down to do the chores early before it resumed. As I approached the lower barn door to the chicken coop, I had a surprise. The trap I'd set was sprung and inside was a large possum. I went into the coop and found that the possum had killed two more hens, eating just the head and neck in possum fashion. I took care of the remains and brought the possum up to the house. I didn't want to kill it even though it had killed so many of my hens. It has been relocated somewhere far, far away. I hope it was the real culprit and that the killing stops now. While I was in the coop, I spent some time with the guinea fowl. I'm trying to get them to be calm when I'm near them. They are fun to be around, very noisy, and curious. But they won't let me come near them.
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| The possum. |
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| Hanging around with the guineas and friends. |
When I came up from the barn, I had a nice surprise waiting for me. The mail had come and in it was a shipment of fall bulbs. Hannah ordered some tulips, crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths, alliums, oriental poppies, and Dutch irises for me. It made me so happy to open that box and see all those bulbs! The idea of spring flowers on such a gloomy day made me smile. Now I just needed some dry weather to plant them.
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| Bulbs in the mail! |
We don't do much to celebrate Halloween in this house. We never have. Even when we had a houseful of children, we didn't go crazy with decorations or costumes. Being out in the boondocks, we didn't go trick-or-treating and we didn't get trick-or-treaters. We usually just bought candy and ate it ourselves while watching a mildly scary movie. Now that the household is all grown up, we've become even less observant. Jack-o'-lanterns are as decorative as we get. We didn't even stock up on candy this year. The Fosters came over for dinner, the usual Friday night pizza. After they left, I chose a movie for Stacey and I to watch. I'd seen a review a few days earlier for a Hitchcock movie I'd never seen before – I thought I'd seen them all – so we watched it, Stage Fright (1950) starring Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, and Richard Todd. It turned out to be a pretty good film. It was tense, it had an appropriate amount of twists and turns to keep me guessing, and it had that unique Hitchcock style that I love. And that was it for Halloween and for the month of October.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world inhabited by our children and grandchildren, things were a little more exciting. Down at the Thayn house, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker (Miriam and Hannah) accompanied a fireman (Russell), a vampire (Mable), Mictecacihuatl, the lady of the dead (June), a cheetah (Florence), and the moon (Hazel) trick-or-treating. It looks like they got quite a haul. Out in Utah, there was Mira from K-Pop Demon Hunters (Ellie), Dorothy Gale (Gwen), and a kid from Cobra Kai (Henry). In Spokane there was Vessel from the Band Sleep Token (Daniel), Jinx (Raven), and Wednesday Addams (Thistle). And over in Montana we had Gomez (Josiah) and Morticia (Vanessa) Addams.
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Sponge and Spiker, Fireman, Vampire,
Mictecacihuatl, Cheetah, and the Moon (her friend was the Sun). |
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| Lots of candy at the Thayn house. |
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| Mira, Dorothy, and Cobra Kai kid. |
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| Vessel, Jinx, and Wednesday Addams. |
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| Gomez and Morticia Addams. |
There was a lot going on here yesterday. First, the day began with a beautiful sunrise, chilly, but beautiful. A nice way to start a new month. Stacey was going to spend most of the day helping our friend who is a funeral director. She fills in from time to time when he's short-handed. Because she would be gone, we hurried and canned apple pie filling with the last of this year's apples. She left just before 10:00 and that left me home by myself for the rest of the day. Well, I wasn't really by myself the whole time. The Nicholases, Chris, the father, and his sons Will and Henry, came by around noon to split firewood for us. They did a good job. I am glad I can check that job off my list.
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| Sunrise on November 1st. |
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| Sunrise on November 1st. |
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| Apple pie filling. |
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| Newly split firewood. |
Stacey got home around 4:30. The rest of the day was quiet. Sarah came over later and we helped her take some measurements for the kitchen over at the farmhouse. Work there is ongoing and extensive. After that, Stacey and I tidied the house to get ready for the Sabbath.
We turned the clocks back last night, so I was awake an hour early this morning. I tried to go back to sleep, hoping if I could, it would help me adjust to the time change more quickly. I couldn't. It will take me at least a week to adjust. Until I do, I'll be awake at 4:30. Our Sabbath has been quiet. It's a pretty day, sunny but chilly. Church was good. We were missing a lot of people – Miriam and Hannah, the Shilligs who are away visiting family, and others. There were just twenty of us. It was Fast and Testimony Meeting and with attendance so light, I wondered if we'd fill the whole hour, but we did. We have a great little group of stalwart members.
In looking at the week before me, I see some hope that I'll get a lot done. I don't have any appointments this week. The weather looks good. No rain until Thursday or Friday. It won't be very warm, but that's how it will be from now on, it is November after all. I have to work no matter what. By the end of this week I hope to have just about everything checked off my Winter Prep List. We have a man coming tomorrow to work on the rain gutters on the house. He'll put a new gutter on the back porch and put leaf guards on the front and the back gutters. No more digging soggy leaves out of the gutters. That will be nice. A big item is taking the pigs to the butcher this Saturday. I'll be glad to see them gone. After we drop them off at the butcher, we are driving down to the Thayn's for the rest of the weekend. It's going to be a busy week. I like that. It's November already.
