Friday

Thanks for your comments Tonia and Dave. :)

My thyroid saga has been reduced to one pill six times a week. I was just a tad hyper my last visit so I get to skip Sunday's pill. Then labs in three months to see how that is working.

At my last visit the doc went through the big list of symptoms I had last December and I answered NO to almost all of them. I told him I was glad I went through the treatment because one pill a day is much better than 5 pills 5 times a day and still feeling like crap. lol.

I still have some real thryroid left, and hopefully that behaves itself and doesn't start overproducing thyroid hormone again. That happens rarely-and usually in severe cases like mine. I think that is one reason I was so aggravated it took so long to get to see the specialist after I was diagnosed- because my thyroid raged on for months. There is some rule that objects in motion want to stay in motion...one of Newton's laws?

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We had our first frost on the lawn this morning. BRRRRR so cold. We didn't get one yesterday, but other places did. One farm had their front and back field cloaked in frost and I thought that looked like a cold place to live!

Our foliage is a disaster. For the last 14 years the Firebird's birthday has been the absolute peak of foliage here, the height of early color of maples and ash. This year everywhere but the swamps is still green.

We did have periods of wind and rain, and my sugar maples have dropped a lot of leaves before they changed.

I am not the only one to notice, I have seen the foliage story carried on AP the last few days. Many hypothesis abound as to what is going on with the foliage. I don't really have a strong opinion myself-I am puzzled.

The change of fall color is attributed to shorter day length-the leaves stop producing chlorophyll and what remains is the actual color of the leaf. As far as I know the day's length is shortening as it usually does.

As far as weather and temperature, we have not been much different from the norm-we get rain and drought and wind on a regular basis but the the leaves still change every year about the same time.

Fungus is getting blamed-well I hope they find out which one! I heard through the farmer's grapevine that potatoes diseased with late blight have been getting dumped along the shore, and then the moist air coming off the ocean is carrying the blight inland and really destroyed everyone's tomatoe crop here. So perhaps that is what is causing the leaves to drop and not change?

Or maybe those big solar flares triggered the trees to keep growing for a bit longer?

I do know that the Firebird's birthday seemed a little less festive with the autumn colors still in hiding.