Late October

Wow it’s late October, how time flies! The leaves all fell off the front walnut and catalpa trees in one swoop Sunday morning. We had temperatures down to the mid 20’s the night before and I got up to a rain of leaves, sliding through the crisp, sunny morning light. I drove into town to buy a newspaper and just had to stop and take a picture of the beautiful red and gold leaves under the big sugar maple near the north end of town. I also got a really neat shot of a big black cat sitting in front of a bunch of Halloween decorations. How cute is that!

Speaking of cats, our barn cats are all dying of some weird disease. The big odd marbled tom died today. He had his hindquarters paralyzed for a day or two before he died. He was able to eat and drink so I don’t worry about rabies. From a high of 16 or so cats the past winter we are down to 2 adults and 3 kittens that were born this year. The little black and white visitor cat still shows up from time to time and I saw a strange orange cat out there one night so we won’t run out of cats. I will miss the marble tom. He showed up here as a half grown cat and was pretty friendly. Everyone remarked on how odd he looked, he was a marbled or swirled tiger, but he was also very tall and had slanted eyes.

The cats had some sort of respiratory disease first. Most were so wild you couldn’t help them in any way. Then I thought that was over and the others just started dying. We only had one litter of kittens born this year from one of the really wild cats- the mother of most of them around here- and she seems immune to everything. I guess nature takes care of over population in her own way. You like to have a couple cats around the barn but too many gets to be a problem too. I don’t miss buying a 20 lb. bag of cat food each week or stepping in cat mess everywhere. I think one of the 3 kittens left is a female, but they don’t look all that healthy either. I’m sure the population will rebound in a year or two.

Honey’s puppies are getting big - big and messy. They seem very healthy, thank god. They seem to be a friendly bunch, only one shows a bit of shyness. They get their shots next week then we try to sell them. I am debating whether to let people with kids come in our house. It’s hard enough to get kids to pick a puppy and deal with a packed room of people and puppies but now those kids may be carrying swine flu. I think we will have a no kids policy this year. Parents are the ones that care for the dog anyway; they should be the one to pick it. They bring 4 or 5 kids, each picks a puppy they like, and then they all sit around and argue for 2 hours about which one to choose.

This week and the next we are familiarizing the pups with the rest of the house, the other dogs and different flooring etc. If it’s nice we will get them outside in a pen on the grass. Cockers are big on running off to explore and unlike the terriers they all go in a different direction. Usually the weather is still nice enough this time of year for them to go out on sunny days but I’m not sure about this year.

We have been picking and putting up a lot of apples this year. The small tree in the backyard gave us a 5 gal. bucket of big fat yellow apples and the tree in back of the barn gave us 2 - 5 gal buckets of small but very tasty green and red apples. They almost taste like Honey Crisp- maybe they are. All of my trees were labeled wrong- the big yellow apples were supposed to be Granny Smiths. I think we have another bucket left to pick on that tree in back of the barn. I have been making and freezing apple pie filling and we put some plain cut apples in the freezer too. It takes forever to peel them. The horses and chickens are enjoying all the peels and cores. I was only able to freeze about 3 quarts of tomato sauce this year so the apples are filling the freezer instead.

I have been moving plants around in the house. I always bring in more than I have space in front of windows for. My office here that I write in has a window that faces north, with a dog door right below it that lets in lots of cold air. I had Steve build a box around the dog door so that maybe I can put some plants in the window above it and they won’t freeze. It has a flap on one end and now the opening faces away from my desk: the cold air won’t blow directly on me while I’m writing and the dogs are running in and out.

We have been winterizing like crazy. Steve covered our bedroom windows that face northwest with a heavy old afghan to keep out drafts. I don’t think plants will grow at all in that room. I have packed the living room and kitchen windows with plants and my unheated porch is full too. When the pups are gone we are re-modeling the other bedroom so I don’t want to put anything in there. I still have to bring in my rosemary pots and tree rose, at least to the porch. One day I will have a greenhouse.