Our cool days and chilly nights disappeared to upper 70’s days and warmer nights. It gives the garden a bit more time, and has provided some delightful days for walks on trails and the woods. I won’t walk our woods now because it is deer hunting season, but the Mountain Lake Conservancy is safe from hunting and has some delightful walks and hiking trails, only 4 miles and 2000 feet of elevation from us.
The roof through the trees, across the lake is Mountain Lake Lodge, aka Kellerman’s from Dirty Dancing fame. When we bought our property, we stayed here for a few nights with Son 1 and his family and the lake was full. It subsequently went dry and has partially refilled. We have spent two New Year’s Eves there enjoying a lovely dinner, big party with favors and champagne toast, room for the night, and breakfast the next morning.
This was another day, the cut through the mountain for the old Huckleberry rail line looking back at the walking bridge next to where the old rail bridge was. No matter the heat outside, this cut is always delightfully cool.
This weekend is an event at Wilderness Road Regional Museum, the Spirit Trail with horse drawn wagon and “spirits” of the region interacting with the riders. Because of the pandemic, the number of riders will be limited, reservations and masks required. For the past two years, I have portrayed an older, slightly crazy version of Mary Draper Ingalls. According to historical accounts, after her the capture, and that of her sister in law, and several children including hers, the deaths of so many of her relatives and friends in their community, her escape and walk back from what is now Ohio to our region, she was probably very fearful of Native Americans and of the dark. Because I am up on the porch of the house/store, and since the wagons only come by every 30 minutes. I am going to dress in my living history costume and participate this weekend. I have missed my living history and though I usually go inside and demonstrate spinning between tours, I will remain on the porch, masked when not “acting.” I love that this event can be done safely and give me the opportunity to participate and support the museum.
After dinner last night, we got a walk in just before it got dark. It was getting quite chilly by the time we returned to the car. Instead of the nearly road wide path to the pond that we usually take, we went the opposite direction down a winding path used for bicycles and horses. Much narrower, more contour, and I feel, a nicer walk through the woods. We only encountered two mountain bikers headed back up to the parking lot until we got to the pond where there were too many unmasked people as we did a single loop and back up the wider path to the car, so a huge loop instead of in and out the same path. The pond had dozens of geese and a few ducks. The geese must be the ones that overwinter in the pond because they don’t even move off the path when you walk by them, so they are used to people. I guess we will see them regularly through the winter walks.
We ended our walk with a stop at the local village store for ice cream. There is one employee who refuses to wear a mask, an older man. His paper mask, probably the same one every day is under his chin, never, ever on. Last night he got a call requesting if they had an item and he came out from behind their plastic shower curtain shield, still unmasked, got right in my face, made a joking comment, laughed and walked on to check for the item. This morning, on our way to the Farmer’s Market pickup, we stopped there for a newspaper and the proprietor, his young employee, and the sole customer were all unmasked. This is after a week where our tiny county has had a surge of about 15 cases and 2 more hospitalizations. I know we live in a Trump dominated county, but if he would be honest about the virus and support mask wearing, I would feel safer.
When we got up this morning, the hunters were here, so the pups had to be let out on leashes, the grass was crystalline and crunchy, the indoor/outdoor thermometer showed it was cold.
As happens, the temperature dropped one more degree before it started warming up. The trip to the Farmer’s Market required window scraping.
When we returned home with our week’s supply of veggies, butter, cheese, and a bit of meat and it had warmed to comfortable in a light jacket, I checked on the garden. Everything I covered survived nicely, except the branch I apparently broke off of the big Serrano pepper. Even the uncovered bush beans don’t seem to have been badly burned and it didn’t bother the marigolds. They will remain covered until it warms tomorrow, then I will put the covers away and let nature take it’s course. It is supposed to warm back up for about 10 days, then the peppers will be done. I may continue to cover the ground cherries and peas at night when the night temps stay in the upper 30’s and see if they produce enough to harvest. After checking on it, the walled garden was in need of light weeding, there are deer tracks through out the garden and several plants have been nibbled to the ground. This garden is right up against the house and deck. I need to get a solar motion sensor light to keep them out if I plan to use it for herbs, dye garden, and flowers.
Being a gorgeous day, and living in a heavenly part of the state, we ventured a few thousand feet elevation farther up the mountain and took a walk in the woods. It was peaceful, serene, and unpopulated.
Disclaimer: though I avoid politics in my blog and am currently avoiding Facebook, I am going to be lightly political here today.
About the time the university opened in the adjacent town, the town established some safely protocols to try to help protect both the students and the full time town folk. Because of the protocols established by the university, making dining on campus more time consuming and perhaps more dangerous, many more students are eating in town, thus putting them on the town sidewalks. One of the new regulations was to post signage throughout town and even two electronic signs mandating mask wearing while on downtown sidewalks and no group gatherings of more than about 10 people.
At the time these were posted, when we elected to walk the old rail grade that runs from near the public library over into the next town, we commented to each other that we wished they had included the signage on that paved trail as well. Some sections of it are widely used. As seniors, but knowing that exercise and fresh air are important, we have been confining most of our walks to the pond in the state forest nearer our house, always masked or with mask in hand to put on if there are other people walking, jogging, or fishing there.
A couple of weeks ago, smaller, modified versions of the sign above appeared on the trail, much to our delight, but to our dismay, mostly ignored. There are two versions of the signage text, as below:
and one with two masked figures with a line between them labelled 6′.
Today we were in town and decided to walk the Huckleberry trail. Social media and the news began labeling entitled white women as “Karens.” While walking today with few masked individuals passing us, many joggers, several bicycles, one skateboard all unmasked, I jokingly said to hubby that I was going to start calling unmasked “entitled” folks “Donalds.” Do you think we can make it as viral as “Karens”?
Note: I will be remotely sharing my posts to Facebook, but I am not viewing Facebook at this time to see reactions or comments posted there. As a blogger, I would love to see your comments below.
Though the temperature today was more like mild summer, when we went on our walk, the evidence of autumn is everywhere.
A cluster of red leaves from a broken oak branch amid the fallen leaves on the trail.
The wood ferns are all browning.
Leaves littering the path, geese resting in the pond before continuing their southward journey. Usually several spend the winter at the pond.
At home, the trees are turning and one young maple has already dropped it’s leaves.
The ridge line we see coming from town is the last to green up in the spring and the first to begin yellowing in the autumn. Soon the woods will be bare and the wildlife can be seen staying away from the open fields and in the edge of the woods. The woods to our north east have thinned enough to begin seeing our nearest neighbor’s house that can only be seen from our house in winter.
The temperatures will fall back after tomorrow to more fall like weather and we will get rain from Delta on the weekend. The frost that was predicted disappeared and I see no chance for at least 2 weeks.
The bulk of my time with the garden in Autumn decline is to spin on my spindles.
Knit on a project I can’t share yet, as it is a gift.
Cook at home. When you want Lasagna and it makes way too much for two, get creative. If Stouffers can do it, so can I.
One for the oven, three for the freezer to be enjoyed on other nights. Made with local cheese, my pasta sauce.
Re-reading for about the 10th time my favorite book that recenters me each time I read it and reinforces my belief in buy local, eat local, grow it yourself if you can.
Take walks at the pond, there is always something new to see. The wildfowl have been absent for the summer, but there was a pair of ducks, an 18″ long garter snake, the usual plethora of turtles, and lovely light play in the woods.
One of these causes seasonal allergies, one does not, do you know which?
We had decided to vote absentee ballot this year due to the pandemic, but today when they came, we drove them straight to the county seat unopened and voted early in person.
No crowd, no line, two masked workers behind a shield wall, so safe and no chance that our ballot would be dismissed for whatever reason. Then we got home to find an article from Forbes on how the Trump Campaign is actively considering how to bypass the results if he doesn’t win. What happened to free and fair elections in this country? What will happen to this country?
The sunflowers are gone, the tomatoes have stopped producing with a few green ones left, the corn stalks are browning. The asparagus ferns have been cut back and the bed weeded, to be burned after it has all dried and nothing is growing near that bed. Peppers, beans, peas, and ground cherries are loving the cooler nights. Most of the locals have already plowed under their summer gardens, I’m milking mine for every veggie and fruit it will provide. The Autumnal Equinox is in 3 days, meteorological autumn arrived 18 days ago. This time of the year is bittersweet as by now, I’m tired of weeding, but not ready for the end of fresh vegetables from my own gardens. We are facing 5 or 6 days of cooler days and chilly nights.
Ground cherries formingThe sole pumpkin found when the corn patch was cleared.The pile of cornstalks, sunflower stems, and asparagus tops to be shredded or burned.
The hunters are beginning to ask permission to hunt on our farm. This I also have mixed feelings about. I enjoy seeing the wildlife and the safety of not having hunters walking about our property, but good community relationships are important too and we often get small tasks that I can’t do offered in return. One of those tasks is to repair/re-level a sagging gutter in the back of the house. I won’t go up a tall ladder any longer, I can’t risk a broken hip or worse if I have an incident.
We still haven’t gotten our mowers back and I am afraid the grass is so tall that they won’t be able to handle it. I may have to wait for the first real frost to hit it before it gets mowed down again, unless we get the replacement brush hog. I will just continue to line trim paths and around the foundation and gardens.
The chickadees, tufted titmouse(s)/mice, and cardinals are returning to the feeders with the finches that have continued to feed. The hummingbirds are still visiting their feeders and checking all of the remaining flowers. They usually leave by the end of the first week of October, then their feeders will be brought in washed, sanitized, and stored until spring.
When it isn’t raining, we take an evening walk, usually at the pond as it isn’t as crowded as town. The wild Asters are blooming, the one below was much more lavender than the photo, fungi of various shapes abound, and I love the reflection on the water.
For now, we will enjoy the cooler weather, safely but sadly alone.
After I posted yesterday, I went down and put the new belt on the mower deck being very careful not to get it twisted and to follow the installation diagram. The engine started right up, I pulled out of the garage, engaged the mower, got about halfway around the front yard once and it ate the new belt. Something must be misaligned, a pulley, unlevel deck, something. So I pulled out the gas push mower to finish the front and mow a path to the chicken coop, yard hydrant, and garden. It hasn’t been started since April and it wouldn’t start. I thought I was going to dislocate my shoulder trying to get it running. Finally, I pulled the new line trimmer down, weed whacked the paths to the coop, hydrant, and garden and came in totally frustrated. A call to the local reliable repair shop to see if they worked on that brand of riding mower and they do, so the trailer was hooked up, the mower loaded and since we were headed there anyway, put the push mower on the trailer too and delivered them to be checked out, adjusted, and hopefully repaired without costing us a month’s retirement installment. Until they are returned, I will just keep paths whacked to the cars, the coop, and the garden.
We are due more rain today and tomorrow, but since the weather is cooling off, hopefully the grass won’t grow so much it can’t easily be mowed.
The reuseable lids arrived yesterday. I have placed an order at the Natural foods store and put pears on the list. If they have any, I will make my marmalade. If not, I will check the Farmer’s Market again on Saturday when I go to pick up my pre-ordered goods. I am still hopeful that since pears are a fall fruit that I will find some variety to use. I have moved some dry goods to old salsa jars and empty tins to free up a few more of the half pint size jars and with the ones still in the basement and a handful of quarter pint sized ones, I have enough for a couple batches of jam or marmalade, and enough pints for another batch of diced tomatoes or pasta sauce. I have combined some quarts of brined jalapenos to half gallons, so I can use quarts for tomatoes too. There are still a dozen wide mouth pints on the shelves as well, so there are enough jars and lids to finish the season’s canning. The beans from the other night added 3 more gallon bags loosely filled so they don’t become an unusable block of blanched beans in the freezer. I wish there was a more environmentally friendly way to store the frozen peas, beans, and corn. A sandwich size container is just about the right size for the two of us for a meal, maybe I should buy a stock of that size container that can be put in the dishwasher and reused year after year. I tried glass jars a couple of years ago, but you have to pack the beans or peas in water and risk jar breakage in the freezer.
Signs of summer fading away.
Wish we could share this out west.Autumn Joy in bloom.One Stella amidst the the faded Calendula which has generously self seeded there.Enough Zinnias for a tiny bathroom vase.Zinnias with ragged leaves and fading blossoms.
The garden is winding down, the flowers are fading, the leaves on the trees are dull and on our walk last night we could see the beginnings of color change and thistles blown.
Blown thistles and cockleburrs against the reflection on the pond.
Soon walks will require layers and starts before, not after dinner as the days shorten, the nights lengthen. And the seasons move on as we continue to distance from family and friends. Stay safe everyone.
When we built our house, we ran our power line 2/10 mile underground from the road to the transformer to the meter. We didn’t want to look at the line coming down our driveway or have poles in our view. But that is not the norm here in rural, rocky, mountainous land. For the past two years, the power company has hired a contractor to cut down trees anywhere near the power lines. They come in, cut a wide path, leaving branches, limbs, and tree trunks where they fell. It may help to reduce power outages, but it has increased wildfire risk. It has been unseasonably wet this year, so hopefully we are not threatened. Since we have lived here, the power goes out periodically, but usually only for a few hours at a time. After a Derocho wind in 2012, it stayed out for 42 hours, and a winter or two after that, it was out for 7 days after an ice storm. We hauled water from the catchment system. Once we could get off the mountain, we hauled ice when we could get it to try to keep the freezer cold enough to not spoil, we grilled, cooked on the top of the wood stove, kept fires burning in the wood stove and the fireplace, wore lots of clothes, and coped. After a week, we booked a hotel room for a day, took all our laundry down, got hot showers, and while hubby tried to watch a Sunday football game on a very poor TV connection, I went to the laundromat. We got a hot meal not cooked on the grill, camp stove, or wood stove, and started home as it was getting dark. To our amazement, as we cleared the gap and could see our mountain, we saw lights scattered up the mountainside, the homes had electricity again.
One of the power line cuts near us.
When our house was being built, before the power line was laid by son and DIL for the power company to hook up, we had a small gas generator they used for power tools. After the week without power, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start, so we took it to the repair place and were told it wasn’t repairable, at least not for what a new one would cost us, but we didn’t purchase one then. We should have.
The hurricane that is about to slam Louisiana and Texas tonight will make it’s way here still with wind and rain, certainly not anything like what they will endure. My thoughts are with those folks who have lost or had their homes damaged before as they face this again. I hope it isn’t another Katrina for them. But, we will have wind and rain and possible outages. Maybe the destruction around the power lines will reduce the likelihood.
At any rate, we drove to town yesterday and the grocer did not have canning lids alone, but I was able to purchase a flat of a dozen 4 ounce jars with new lids. I came home, thawed the pints of pasta sauce and reboiled it while the big canner heated up and canned it in quart jars to save lids, so my pasta sauce is safe from an outage. Then I went outside to the garden and picked almost a dozen more tomatoes that are sitting in the kitchen window waiting to see if enough will ripen to make another batch before they have to be frozen. I won’t can green beans or peas as I don’t like the texture of overcooked vegetables, so I will just make sure that the freezer is packed densely toward the bottom, not in the hanging baskets and toss a couple of big bags of ice in there too and hope that if we lose power, it isn’t for long enough to spoil the meats and frozen vegetables in there. The brined and fermented pickles and peppers in the refrigerator will be fine. Hopefully the wind won’t be strong enough to knock down the tomatoes. We had a brief, maybe 90 minutes worth of strong wind and some rain with thunderstorms that dropped south last night. It tipped over a large jade plant on the porch, blew a cushion off a chair, but no other damage.
Today’s walk was a throw back walk. Fifteen years ago, we stayed at Mountain Lake Lodge about 4.5 miles farther up the road off which we live, with Son 1, DIL, and 9 week old Grandson 1. The lake was full, Son 1 and DIL dove off the pier after a canoe ride across the lake and around the huge rocks at the end of the lake. The lake is only a pond now with no swimming, fishing, or boating allowed. We started up in the woods and walked down the mountain to the Lodge parking, down to the pier that is now on dry land with young trees growing up, then down a path through what used to be the lake bottom to a temporary floating dock they installed when the lake started losing water. It too is on dry land now. From there, we did a steep uphill back to the trail that lead to where we parked our car. The walk was about the same length as the walk we do in town, but it was cooler, less foot traffic, and more intense in elevation changes. A very pleasant time.
The original pier.The temporary no longer floating pier. Above hubby’s head and slightly left across what remains of the lake are the rocks we canoed around on that trip.A little garter snake by the trail.A ferny woodland.
After early heavy rain this morning, the day turned beautiful. It is muggy because of all the rain, but blue sky, so after making a homemade pizza, I took a walk. Without raincoat and boots. My usual route is a fair amount of elevation change, up our long driveway, down our gravel road, over our creek, then uphill to the top of the hill for which our road is named. From there, I leave the road for a farm road through the woods. Until the grass gets about knee deep, I cross the neighbor’s field to a lower farm road and then back to the gravel road and home. The field has gotten too tall and with the tick load this year, I have quit doing that part and when I get to the end of the woods road, I turn around and retrace my steps.
I love the lightplay on the hill as I walk the woods road.
My favorite part of the walk.
The rain didn’t knock down all of the Rhododendron blooms.
Lots of fungi from the rain, this one was pretty.
If you have ever seen the movie “Dirty Dancing,” the lodge where it was filmed is just over the crest of that mountain, about 4 miles and 2000 feet higher beyond us.
It was nice to get out in the air, in the woods, and get some exercise.
My nine hens aren’t producing eggs in the quantity that they did last year. One has been broody for at least 6 weeks. Usually after the 22 days needed to hatch eggs, they give up, but not this one. I have isolated her away from the nesting boxes, dipped her repeatedly in cool water, and nothing will break her. I guess this fall it will be time to start with new flock. I think I will go back to the big bodied, gentle Buff Orpingtons. Last night when I went out to gather the eggs and lock them up for the night, I found an apparent misfire.
When I cracked it this morning, it was just white, no yolk.
Yesterday I wound off the yarn I had plied from the Peacock colored gradient braid. The greens were an additional 212+ yards for a total of 506+ yards of light fingering weight yarn to become the yoke of a new sweater for me.
The next week will be more like a typical summer with hotter temperatures, more humidity and some thunderstorms.
Stay safe. Wear your mask for my safety, I wear mine for yours.
I periodically suffer from extreme GERD attacks. The first one landed me in the E.R. thinking I was having a heart attack. Now when it happens I grab the Tums, chew Fennel seed, avoid certain foods, but I don’t feel like heavy exercise when it happens. The most recent attack began last weekend, so walking our steep road was not appealing to me, doing the driveway to the mailbox and back, almost half a mile has been about all I wanted to do. Yesterday was better and we went to town to walk a part the old paved rail grade that runs between two towns. The part we chose is usually not busy with walkers, but we know there are a lot of bicycles. We ended up seeing at least a dozen walkers, another dozen bicycles, and three maintenance men mowing the edges. No one had on a mask but us. The path is about 8 feet wide with another couple of feet mowed on each edge. When we were approaching another walker, we moved off the right side of the path and kept going, doing about 2 1/2 miles.
Today I decided to do our road. I had a couple of ulterior motives because we are about to get a few days of rain and it will be muddy and the rain will knock down Rhododendron blooms, and because Artist daughter in law wants Cicada shells. I have been looking around the trees near the driveway and gathered a few, but mostly seeing live Cicadas. I found a windfall of them today along the road and quit counting at 60 gathered.
As they emerge wingless, they climb and the shell splits down the back and the new adult Cicada emerges, dries it’s wings and flies off to find a mate. We are in week 2 of the emergence and they only live 4 to 6 weeks then after laying their eggs, they die.
The one craft that I do that can be done while walking is spinning on a spindle. I stuffed some fluff in a bag, hooked it to my belt loop and took my Jenkins Finch for a walk and parked it in a Rhododendron bush to take a picture of the flowers.
I always love coming out of the woods after climbing this hill and seeing the roof of our house appear below the ridge.
The seasonal wildflowers continue to change. The multiflora roses, another invasive species here is blooming, the dandelion puffs have faded and the Goat’s beard puffs are emerging.
It was a pleasant day for a nice walk before coming home to prepare dinner for us.
Cabin Crafted 