OCTOBER 2022

It was still warm and dry today but there was rain on the way. So I decided to mow over the leaves before the rain came. It didn't take very long and the yard looked a lot better, neater. I came back to the house, the wind started blowing and the yard looked just like it did before I started. And, the rain got here.
When it's dry enough, I'll mow over the new leaves and get some of them ground to dust. I'll be doing that every couple of days though the end of the month and into November.
The leaves are really falling fast now.

ELLEN:
I keep hoping the wind will blow ours away, but so far, no such luck. Now that the walnuts and catawba trees' leaves are down, it's time for us to mow them to death, too.


GRAYMARE:
Got your photo! Nell E is a great looking pup! Posting in a second.....
'

Oh, GM, I love Nell E! And your neatly-kept house!

And the fact that you once roamed these parts. I've probably said this before, but I consider York my home town -- sadly now grown from about 4,000 when I was a kid to something like 15,000 now, with 35,000 or so in the summer. Traffic lights and traffic snarls and all that good stuff. Gray Beaver Bog is in the hinterland -- has a kind of ramshackle Facebook site with entries and photos going back to 2011, and they might trigger memories. They do for me -- showing the barn and family that run the place. Also show the bog (which I've never seen), and if you can enlarge it, a newspaper article about how it started.

ELLEN and ARK -I'm not sure now if got 100 pounds! I do know that the bill was up around $120, and that included the tiny amount of bacon and a small bag for a friend. In the past, they sold big quantities in wooden boxes that they made; then they switched to cardboard; now it's plastic bags - yuk.

And Oh, ARK, you overestimate me by scads! I won't be making preserves. Just the relish that I eat regularly, and that I make when I need to. (Pretty easy, too: just grind a whole orange and the cranberries together in a blender, and add sugar. No cooking.) I get the big quantity because you can't buy whole cranberries outside of this season -- at least I can't. And I don't know why, because just about every other berry is available frozen, year-round. Somebody told me that people don't want them except at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  True??

Now most of the bright leaf colors are gone, leaving the oak's relative drabness to stand out in big masses everywhere here. I like that. Not show-offy, those oaks. And I confess I'm one who, these days anyway, counts on the wind to take them away...

ARK - May I send you a pic of that crossbow to post?

Nell E. Belle is very pretty, and looks extremely happy.

It's windy today, but the leaves are still damp from the rain last night and aren't blowing anywhere. Drat. I'll just keep mowing them and turning them into free fertilizer. When most of them are off the trees Neighbor Kent will come with his blower and blow the rest of them down the hill where they too will become dust.

Beech, the changing population is what happens here too. Around the lakes about 35% are permanent residents. The rest are summer and weekend people. When I first moved here I was told by two different people that I would like seeing all of them go away for the winter, but would be glad to see them come back in April. They were right.

BEECH:
 Sure!  Send me the photo and I will post it!   Arkazivan@gmail.com
I can't wait to see it!  Is your brother getting good at shooting it?
 I am still impressed with you processing 100 pounds of cranberries, however you do it.    

My apple tree didn't produce well this year, so i didn't dry any apple slices.  We had a couple of late frosts and then had a flock of Cedar waxwings come in and eat the blossums on the apple tree.  Poor tree didn't have a chance this year.  We got some apples, but not the bags we get sometimes.  The deer took care of the few apples that fell to the ground, so the horses didn't get many either.  Oh, well.   I hope that flock of birds don't show up again this coming year.  That was a first.  


ELLEN:
 We enjoy the summer when most of the college students are gone after all year of traffic and crowds.  So our slow time of year is opposite of yours.     With Virginia Tech,  Radford University and New River Community College all within 15 miles of us,  we have about 50,000 students running around.  Summers are great!

GRAYMARE:
 Nell E is so pretty!  Thanks for sending the photo.  It's great to have pix of all the animals we hear about.  

Nell E. Belle looks like a very happy dog!

In the last 2 weeks I have had 7 Mondays at work and I'm only working 4 days a week right now. I am taking Wednesday's off for a while to use up vacation days. Yesterday was exciting. I was at a stop light waiting to turn left at a busy intersection when I heard gun shots I saw the flashes from the shots and then saw the car drive away from the 7 - 11. The car went in the same direction I was going to turn. After a bit my light turned green and since nothing else seemed to be happening I went ahead and turned and continued on my way only to discover that because of the heavy traffic on the 2 lane road the bad guy didn't get very far before I realized there was one car between him and me. I called 911 and was able to let dispatch know where the bad guy was. I stayed on the phone with dispatch and followed the bad guy letting dispatch know where he was turning etc. There were train tracks with a train in the way and backed up traffic because of the train involved. I never was very close to the bad guy until we got to the bad intersection that always gets clogged up when trains are passing through and the bad guy was stopped and I ended up right behind him able to give dispatch his plate number. After about a minute of sitting in traffic he decided to risk on coming traffic and pass all of the stopped cars. At that point he was on his own. At the same time the train cleared the tracks and police cars appeared from various directions. Hopefully they were able to catch him. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes. But it was exciting and I doubt I ever exceeded 35 mph.

Good for you, Indy! First, I'm glad you weren't hurt. Second, I love it when the bad guys get caught.
I did something like that several years ago. It was very satisfying when they called me back to tell me they got the drunk off the road.

Hello everyone...It's been a busy Indian Summer here in PA. The trees are lit up up with so many colors..
After watching my neighbors and their falling leave problems, I'm glad our trees are out in the woods and not around the house. I can enjoy their leaves and not have to rake them up.

INDYAPP: WOW that was an exciting drive. Thank God nothing happened to you.

ARK: Loved the photo of your horses and the deer in the same pasture.

GRAYMARE: What a sweet pup Nell E is. Beautiful doggie.

ELLEN: Glad you have a gas fireplace for the power outages. We just put in a Generac whole house generator. Love it...no dashing around plugging and unplugging things and trying to start the old gas generator. Of course, since we put it in our power has only gone out ONE time for about 2 minutes..LOL Kinda like when we bought a snow blower, hardly any snow that winter.

BEECH: Love cranberries....and they are so healthy for us. Cranberry juice every morning is served here.

Have a safe and fun Halloween. My church group Barnabas Ministry has decided we are not doing Trunk or Treat at church again this year. Too much sickness going around and since we are all older not taking a chance. Hopefully next year thins will get back to some kinda of normal.

INDYAPP:
 I think you could have a whole new career as a private detective!  Good work on helping catch that guy!  Hopefully they will throw the book at him.  

TRUDY:
 I don't rake our leaves in the yard.  I mow them to death.  
   Those fawns are growing like weeds.  I hope they continue to hang out in the pasture.  Hunting season is sneaking up on us.  The fawns seem to be honorary herd members, they get closer to the horses every day.   Today they were with Cactus Jack and Trinket.

Happy Halloween All!

It was beautiful this past weekend. Everyone and his brother was out raking and burning leaves Saturday and Sunday afternoon. I'm one of the few people who actually like the smell of burning leaves, By early evening there was this thin layer of smoke hovering everywhere. I can't stand the smell of people burning trash, but leaves and wood, love it.

Love the deer hanging out with the ponies ARK. I had a flock of turkeys show up Friday evening and they hung around all weekend. At one point the horses decided they were snort worthy and all four horses were prancing around snorting at them and the turkeys ignored them. There were about a dozen turkeys. I heard on the news that fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving may be as high as $100 some places this year. If it gets that high I think I'll have a tuna casserole.

It's raining leaves today. The trees are mostly bare now or will be very soon. Except... for the neighbor's oak tree. That thing loses leaves slowly and most of them wind up on my sidewalk and driveway. The yard that was mostly cleared the other day is completely covered now. The lawn tractor is going to get a lot of exercise. It really is amazing to see a huge pile of leaves reduced to a little pile of dust that disappears into the grass.

Holy cats, INDY! Right behind the active shooter? Have you learned since what led up to the shooting? Or more about the shootist? I will be looking for you as featured citizen-heroine on national evening news.
And I love "snortworthy." Going to add it to my list.  (The shootist was probably snortworthy -- though maybe less so in cities these days where, incredibly, such events have become commonplace. Why I live among trees...)

MANYG - I wish now that I'd sprung for a Generac. I bought a big new dual-fuel Champion two years ago, bigger and more expensive than I wanted, but it all that was available at the time, and I feared that, if I waited, I'd get none. Hookup also cost way more than I'd anticipated. And, of course every time the power's gone off since, I've not used it because it's seemed like too much effort to go out and try to remember how to use it! (Each time I figure, well if the power's not back by daybreak...) Meantime, I've spent hours and hours laboring over building a wooden cover for it. Built part of one last year, tore it apart and started again this year.  Made it hard on myself by using only scrap lumber -- among other parts, weathered hemlock boards cut and milled on the farm at York and used as rails on my riding ring there, and reused on another ring I built -- and dismantled -- here. Because I want to be able to run it in rain and snowstorms, it's got doors and vents and a roof that lifts and is turning into the most cockamamie thing imaginable. Still not done. Today I had to resort to Tylenol to relieve the crick in the neck it's given me. Picture-worthy for sure, and I'll post if ever I finish.

ARK Photo of the marshmallow crossbow is in my cell phone, not my computer, and now I'm going to have to figure out how to mail it to you from there.  Did I mention that I'm progress- challenged ????....
P.S. You and Donnie need to think up some of your special names for those deer.

A little while ago, I had a visit from a cow, a giraffe, and a unicorn. Of course, it was the girls. Where I live we never get any Trick or Treaters, so the girls get the good stuff.

ELLEN:
I bet those creatures were very cute!  We never get trick or treaters.  Not enough people on this part of our road to make it worthwhile. So we buy some Reeses Cups, just in case some lost T&T-er finds their way here, and enjoy them ourselves when they don't show up.     We ate the first ones at 9 pm this evening,...


BEECH:
Send me an email and I will respond by sending you my phone number.  I don't want to post it here because we get lurkers.   You can send your photo to me by texting it to my phone number.   Arkazivan@gmail.com  

 Donnie worries about those fawns all the time.  They were in our yard this afternoon instead of in the pasture.  We aren't sure how they got out, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves in our yard.  This would be okay, but our yard is open to the road.  So Donnie opened up the upper field gate so they could get back into the pasture.  It was pouring rain while he did this.   A few hours later the fawns were back in the field and he dashed over to the gate and shut it before they left again.   I hope they stay in the field.   We haven't named them because deer tend to come to a bad end and that would make it worse.   We call them the little fawn and the bigger fawn.  We think they are both female.   A larger male has been coming into the field lately, checking them out.

Photo taken today of fawns in our yard.  The barn is 300 feet from the house, so the distances are foreshortened by the camera.  It was pouring rain when this was taken.

Looks like even small deer are good jumpers.

I have no idea if the shooter was ever captured. I do know that the police found the car shortly after I lost sight of it, however from what I read was the car was empty. There is a FaceBook page called Nosy Neighbors of Elkhart that reports on police calls almost as fast as they happen. It is a page where people post things like Is this the car that was at the 7 11 shooting? It was empty when the picture was taken and it was indeed the car that I had followed. I also read on the page that the 7 11 was not robbed, but a drive by shooting of 2 cars shooting at each other. I only saw the one car. The page also reported that the trash truck that was in the alley was hit by gunfire and one of the bullets hit very close to the driver's head. We have terrible newspaper reporting, or local news but Nosy Neighbors are pretty accurate if lacking follow up details.

I'm following the generator thread going on here. I've been thinking of getting one but have no idea what I should take in consideration when making a decision. Would love to hear pointers what you like or dislike about what you decided on. I can totally relate to recycling wood for various projects.

I was trick-or-treat erless also. I didn't wait to start on the TT candy though, I bought my bag about 2 weeks ago and have just a few pieces left. I wanted to have something in case any showed up, at least that is what I tell myself. I'm sure Bill and I will finish off the bag by the end of the week.

INDYAPP:
That's quite an adventure! I suspect those online forums are taking over the local news source for lots of areas. There's one here, too, although what goes on it is a bit iffy most of the time. I keep it to find out when the garbage schedule changes...
I don't think those fawns are big enough to jump that fence yet, it is 5 feet tall along the top part of the field. They may be going thru some hole along the bottom and then coming up the side.... or something. Or maybe jumping the 4 foot gate. I just wish they'd stay in the field. Cars are most likely to get them, then great white hunters wanting an easy shot.


Well it is November 1st! Yikes. Time to change the calendar. Go to:

https://horsefriends.forumotion.com/t137-november-2022#14679

or to Basket and then November 2022.