October 20th, 2015

Saturday morning we finally had our first hard frost.

And hard frost it was!  I let the indoor/outdoor cat out, and the dog, and then the indoor cat ran out too!  So I ran out after her barefoot and the doormat was frozen solid!  Ruby really likes to make a run for the woods, so it took a little while to catch her.  (funny cat is in the word catch)

The foliage was a full week later than usual.  I know this even though I am going senile, because color is usually at it's height for the FIrebird's birthday, and when he came down to visit four days later it wasn't close to color.

When the frost hit, the leaves that had changed dropped.  Walking down the driveway to the chicken coop (this time in boots) *swish, swish scrunch* ankle deep in beautiful reds and yellows and oranges of the delicate maples that are the first to go.

The sound brings back memories of trick or treating up and down the blocks in towns through the years as the kids were growing.  Inevitably, at least once per year, the leaves in the gutters would hide the curbs to the little faces glued on the next lamp post-and we would be scurrying around in the dark trying to find the loot that went flying in the stumble.

We had another hard frost Sunday morning.  It was so hard that the ice skim stayed on the tops of the rain barrels for the whole day, and I had to declare the automatic chicken water retired for the season.

I was splitting wood in the cold sunshine and the wind kicked up with a dark cloud-and then it was snowing!  Not the big fat flakes of the typical early squalls, but fine little balls that looked like someone had ripped open one of those bean bags chairs.

Yesterday it was drizzly and damp and dreary in the 40's.  The chill was still there this morning, and then the sun came out and we hit mid sixties.

The colors are still lovely despite the rain and wind.  But there's a melancholy feel to the air as the sun gets lower in the sky.  I looked up late afternoon at the tall elm, now almost bare, and keenly felt the loss of my friends the trees, heading off for their long winter sleep.

HB

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.

Friday

I finally got my cam going this week. I took a ride to Augusta for 10 bags of Quickcrete and tooks so many pictures I filled my memory card.

Today we finally had some rain. I mean several inches. R and I worked at the farm this a.m.. We were soaked through and through! I was wringing water out of my shirt sleeve and that was under a rubber raincoat- and it was high 40's so we were freezing! The winds gusts were up near 50mph-quite a wild morning!

Calm and mist now. My own goats are out so it can't be too wet! Goats like the wet even less than cats!

Sunday

Lazy lazy Sunday! I'm house sitting for K, so I did manage to be slightly productive when I tucked the five does and two German Shepherds in for the night. The K family is at Fryeburg Fair this week.

Bosses were away this weekend as well; a show in Vermont. Mr Boss took two weanling does in the back of the Subaru; Boss took four bucks in the truck. Three wild ones and a rubbing pissy pest! lmao. (Chris, though I love him, once urinated on a handler at a show. Willow loves to tell that story! You also can't get a collar on Chris without him vigorously rubbing whatever part of you he can reach with his stinky face.) Saturday buck chores were a lot easier with only eleven and the trouble makers out of state. I do favor the yearling Bo out of Bonnie and Zeus. His bright blue eyes and white accents are so charming. He was reticent to go in the truck-I leaned forward and said, "don't worry Bo, you're going to a show, you'll have fun," while he looked at me with those bright blues, lol.

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Three soccer games this week. Our last game was away and we kicked some serious soccer butt. We won 5-1. The first time we played the team, we lost 3-1, and our one was almost a mercy goal twenty feet from the goal on a hard foul free kick. (ok, obviously don't know proper soccer lingo...lol)

The Firebird was talking about the last game:

"Once I reached out and flicked the ball away as he(the opposing team player) was going to kick it and he kicked my foot instead and went over backwards."

"Another time I put my foot on the ball and stopped the ball and the kid flew right over it."

**

"They started to get afraid of me after that."

The team was on fire! They needed a good win! Yeah!

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Well's STILL dry. The ground water table is very low! Don't let all those weather reports of torrential rains on the east coast fool you...we had a lot of wind, enough to knock out the power briefly early Friday morning and leaving me stranded on the downstairs couch in the uttermost blackness you can imagine...fumbling my way to bathroom and bedroom absolutely blind, hands out ready to crack a shin or step on a cat...but only a bit of rain late Friday-not nearly enough! Maybe rain tomorrow!

Color is high, although the wind took care of a lot of the early maple and ash.Beech is turning, looks like early color this year. Frost warnings up tonight.

Rainy Saturday

Ok, I won't complain about the rain. The well is getting desperately low, even though we are very conservative with water. All that rain in June and July I thought we would be fine this year...and then heat and drought in August. After all that cold and rain I didn't complain about the heat and drought though!

We did get a bank and dump run in this am. I discovered it was a skunk getting into the trash. I saw it on the deck this week. And it has a penchant for yogurt and the plastic spoons used to eat it-every yogurt container and plastic spoon was strewn out of the ripped open bags. What a mess!

I didn't make my goal of two more post holes this week. I picked up 8 - 60 pound sacks of concrete and put four in one hole on Thursday, and left it for the post and collar and opted to dig around one of the bad posts to use the rest of the cement I had.

Even though I have braced that beam with two whomping posts and a massive foundation of concrete, I was very nervous when I started digging around the bad post. I expected that the rot would be limited to ground level-no, it chased the post down into the ground.

Originally a 10" diameter cedar post, at least an inch all around was gone. The posts have been in 11 years nearly to the day. It was easy to see why that row had deteriorated so much faster-it was backfilled in clay. I swear we had backfilled in sand, but not that post. Plus, the water from that side of the house drains there, and the ground was not graded so there was a trough where the posts go in the ground.

Clay and wet=rot. And tough digging!!!

The other holes have taken me 1 to 1-1/2hours to dig out. This one took 3 hours. I start with a spade and then move on to a garden fork, stabbing it ferociously around the post to loosen the clay. Once it gets more than a foot deep, I start bailing with a coffee can. By the end I am flat on the ground reaching in as far as I can and scooping up handfuls into the can and then backing out of the hole and dumping it. I felt like I was in the Great Escape digging a tunnel.

I thought, what woman in her right mind undertakes a task like this? I should be prettying myself up and seducing some strong guy into the job, or at least offering to cook dinners in exchange for the labor. As far as hiring someone-I don't have the cash flow to part with it.

So I scrabble clay under my broken fingernails, finish the hole, and start mixing concrete in the wheelbarrow. Another four bags and a bunch of rocks. I get concrete dust in my hair and my arms -no-everything- starts to ache with the effort.

I barely crawl away after cleaning the tools and discover I am at least three bags short to finish that hole-and another two for the hole I started on Thursday. I do a quick estimate and figure I need to mix 17 more bags just to finish the North beam, and dig around two more posts.

The center beam needs two more holes and four more posts dug out. The south beam will have to wait until next year. Those posts seem to be in better shape anyhow.

I can't believe those three posts-toothpicks really-were holding up the north beam!

I took a couple photos of the process, but haven't downloaded them yet. I do, however, have a few more foliage shots of my drive to the farm every morning. I love the fiery early maple color!!!