Indian Summer

It’s a beautiful Indian summer Sunday here today and I would much rather be working outside than inside today, but when you are a freelance writer you push yourself to meet those deadlines. I am using this blog to get warmed up today, to settle my mind, so bear with me. I promised myself some time outside later today.

I went out to feed the animals this morning and it was already so nice I wanted to linger. I decided to walk around and see if anything was still blooming. I actually found some blooms, tiny violas, the white wild asters, and a few blooms on the Masterwort. The petunias I had in various spots are still remarkably green, although none are blooming. Of course on my unheated porch those things I brought in are blooming. I have several colors of geraniums, some begonias and lantana blooming there.

My walk around the yard made me realize that I need to cut the 8’ stalks that were left from my lilies down, they look awful. But in examining them I found out that my small, very slow growing Holly plants actually had some berries this year, at least one did. That means I must have the correct male -female pair.

Everything is slowly getting covered with oak leaves, which is great. They make good mulch for the winter. I am going to do just enough raking to get some to put around my roses in the big bed in the center of my lawn.

We made a pen off the front porch and put the cocker puppies outside for the first time. Their mama went with them and encouraged them to dig in the lawn. If the weather stays nice we can show them to folks coming to buy them out there instead of trying to fit everyone in our small living room. The babies were a little unsure at first, crunchy leaves underfoot and big huge rumbling grain trucks going by on the road. But soon they were having a good time. I sure hope we can sell them soon; they are eating us out of house and home. But they are so soft and floppy cute at this stage, all developing their individual personalities.

I picked another big bucket of apples last night, using the rake to pull them out of the top of the tree. They were quite nice looking for organic apples. Lily and Charlie stood by to grab all the apples that fell to the ground and they got quite a few. These appear to be GoldRush apples, I asked our MSU apple expert to taste one and give me a guess. The trees were labeled incorrectly when we bought them. They stay on the tree through all kinds of wind. Our other trees drop their apples when they get ripe, these will hold on all winter. And they taste great, crisp and juicy, just the right amount of sweet. Now if I had time to process all those buckets of apples under my kitchen table we would be all set.

I wish this wonderful weather would stay around all winter- you know- that global warming thing they keep promising. I could live with 60’s all winter, that’s for sure. And for us to have a few days of sunshine, even weak November sunshine, is great. They say the November weather is a pre-view of the upcoming April weather. So far it looks good.