First Snow

So we had our first snow for the season this week. We received 3 to 4 inches, no biggy, and it was 'fairy tale' snow - it only gathered on the trees and the grass and melted on the roads. No hard freeze that night, so we have a Camelot situation. Pretty good. Now, the bad news - our beautiful fall foliage was still on the trees, so the heavy, wet snow caused some damage and power outages. And we all complained, boy, did we complain. Nothing cheerful about getting snow on October 15. Especially with all the foliage tours and Oktoberfests planned for this weekend.

In the scheme of things, it was not as bad as the first snow last year on October 28. This was predicted, unlike that one, where a few flurries turned into approximately two feet! I noticed many people had a more resigned aura about them. It is going to happen, we will complain, and life goes on. Are we prepared? The stores rushed the snow blowers and salts out front, moving aside the Christmas decorations. (Halloween, Thanksgiving - that stuff is in the back marked down already. One town has their Halloween parade today - not like Halloween is on a Saturday this year - just get it over with!) But I think most people figured this would melt and we would be okay, depending on how many snows they have seen. Now the one that was predicted for tonight into tomorrow is another matter. This one may cause a little panic, as it is associated with a "classic Nor'easter" - batten down the hatches, matey!

On another issue, the flu (scream here). My husband got his flu shot last week - not the H1N1 - and the vaccine was administered into his arm and shot right back out! The pharmacist giving the shot had never seen that happen before - neither had my husband, of course. The two men just sat there and looked at each other for a while, after the original exclamation of "huh?" "What now?" The pharmacist examined the needle - nothing wrong - he examined the arm - nothing wrong - he harrumphed and mumbled and my husband is asking "Well?" No bone was hit, and no offense to my hubby, but his muscles are not that pumped. So, we have to go back in 1 month for another flu shot, for free, because we are not sure if any vaccine got in at all. Weird. Can hardly wait for whatever the H1N1 vaccine brings.

The Unfinished Projects of Spring

It is Autumn. Where did the Summer go? I took a long walk around the house and I noticed all the unfinished projects planned last spring. I am not frustrated; I am more amazed that the time escaped us.

The tree that fell last winter - still there. Like I expected to get up and leave (leaf?) or something. We had discussed getting a lumber company or logger to come out, thin out some of the overgrowth and pay us for the lumber. But the economy beat us up on that - if people are not buying houses, or fixing things up, they do not buy lumber and so the loggers do not look for the little purchases and clean-ups - they need to make money on the stuff people are buying. We could pay to clean it up, but that is an expense we cannot handle in the priority of things.

It is what we call a 'yay/boo.' Yay, that huge tree is not hurting anything, really. Boo, when it toppled, it must have disturbed the water table, so the pond is no longer there in our woods. Yay, we had less mosquitoes and we did not have to treat the pond for standing water. Boo, we did not see the ducks or hear the frogs as they enjoyed the pond.

Hedges grow extremely well in the wet summer we had, so we never got them trimmed as much as we would have liked. We did get a garden planted, late, but we are still picking squash and we put in a second planting of lettuce to hopefully get picked before a heavy frost. The corn gifted us with maybe 8 ears before it got sick and died. Nice corn stalks, however.

I have to believe that it will all be accomplished eventually. As my husband always says to me, "You are the only one bothered by it!"

When we start a new project, like the garage project, sometimes normal maintenance can suffer. We had a chilly day this week and when we took our warm jackets out of the closet, one of them had mildew on it. One of those rainy days caused water to seep in under the door of the closet, causing a moisture build up and attacked my husband's canvas cowboy coat. (I think it is a costume type thing - the South Philly boy in a cowboy coat and Stetson - oh, yeah, cowboy boots too. Go figure!) So washing and spraying with Lysol was the chore for that day. The excitement goes on...