And So It Begins

Scattered pictures of the Way We Were....

Now it's time for a new song, the Way We Are.

The bright days of summer

Gave way to the Gloom and Doom of November.

And yes, the picture is blurry because the camera focused on the wet window and not the scene outside of it.  But that's ok, because that's what I'm focused on, too, the great, wet outdoors.  I still have work to do out there yet.  And it's snowing.  Surprisingly, I don't have my undies in a bundle over the snowfall, this is just Mother Nature's advance warning, a shot across the bow, if you will.  The really big guns are out there, lurking, and we'll get some real snow, real soon.   That's a promise, not a threat.

Mother Nature thought my urns needed a little tweaking; she put an oak leaf in the arrangement for me.

November is not my favorite month of the year for a coupla reasons.  The dark, gloomy weather is one thing and the time change is another.   It's not really winter, but it's not really fall, it's too early to quit working outside entirely, but the work that is left behind is much more difficult to do.  Everything is wet and cold and sloppy and muddy and just plain goo.  Yes, you read it right, I said Goo.  It's just goo.  And very often, the goo arrives overnight and doesn't leave for five months or more.

During the long days of summer, I get lulled into thinking there's plenty of time to get everything done and my GADS is in full swing; I'm running around weeding this and planting that and deadhead a few over here and maybe do a little pruning over there, I'm this big ol' butterfly flitting around in circles, round and round she goes, and who knows where she'll land next?

'Summertime, and livin' is easy,' goes the old song, well, maybe not 'easy' in the garden, but definitely more pleasant.  You just get to thinking you have all the time in the world to get everything done.  Gardener's Attention Deficit Syndrome is an insidious malady, creeping up on me until the day the dapper newscaster turns to his grinning co-anchor and makes the cheery announcement:  "Daylight Savings Time ends today, don't forget to turn your clocks back before you go to bed tonight, folks!"

"Oho, that's right, Jim, it's that time of year again.  But won't it feel good to have an extra hour's sleep tomorrow morning?"says his blonde-haired cohort as they both beam gleefully into the camera. 

Then the panic sets in.  What?  I sit and blink at the TV screen.  No, it can't be that time already?  Can it?  It's sort of like hitting the snooze alarm in the morning and then rolling over to see you've hit it about twelve times and now you have about 6.3 minutes to get to work.    Now, Everything needs to be done and FAST.  We are running out of time!  No let me rephrase that: we are OUT of time.  It's getting dark a whole HOUR earlier now! 

No more flitting around the garden with Joel's camera around my neck looking for photo ops.  Put that camera away (in the house.....don't leave it outside on a rock because it gets dark out WAY too soon and you'll lose it) and grab a bucket, start yanking out those dead flowers, hey, cut back those hostas, wait...did I dig the calla lilies?  How many of these geraniums do I want to save for next year, make room in the shed for the concrete statuary, when are we going to yank out the dead waterlily foliage, where did all these weeds come from? Didn't I just weed this bed a few weeks ago?  Who tossed all those rocks around on the lawn by the construction site, get me a pallet or twenty, what's going on with the lawn furniture, are we going to cover the stone house walls or leave them bare nekkid, why did I buy those daffodil bulbs, now I'll need a chisel to get them in the ground, good grief, here's three shrubs and a fern I bought in July hiding behind the water barrel I just dumped out, now-- where, oh where am I going to plant them?  

Time to haul all the statuary in; she'll get way too cold in that light frock over winter.

Our big push project this fall was the stone house, but we had to quit due to freezing temperatures, so I've been working on cleanup for a few weeks now, but not fast enough.  We've been known to put up spotlights in the trees so we could keep placing rocks, especially during the Quarry and Pachyberm garden construction projects, but this year, there's no big project to finish except for the stone wall down in the Formal Garden. But now it's snowing....and I need to move a bunch of pallets off the lawn before winter so the grass doesn't all die completely and so I can snowblow my trails this winter.  That's all come to a standstill too, because my tractor is out of commission at the moment.

A few years ago, Spring looks alot like late Fall around here:  Mud

Joel and my tractor, moving a rock a few years ago.

Ack!  My tractor is out of commission!  There goes the alarm clock again.  I went up to Mom's to help Joel with his tractor on Saturday and there was my tractor, with her hood off, abandoned in the middle of an intensive surgery with a pail under her to catch her dripping fluids.  The water pump on the 574 had been knocking and we knew it was going out this summer so we ordered a new one and had it sitting there for a few months, ready to install .  (Yeah, I know, more GADS again....'we've got time before the snow flies'--famous last words.) 

Two weekends ago Carl went to put the new water pump in and found out the new one we bought is not the right part.  Turns out we have an oddball tractor (go figure) with parts that were made in England.   Hmmmmm....that poses a problem; England is kinda far away.  Our friendly automotive parts person is sending the water pump out to be remanned  (that's Man-Speak for remanufactured) so my poor 574 can once again run free-- as free as the wind blows the snow into huge, hard, ice-encrusted drifts half my height.  

And now it's snowing.  Yes, I have the walk-behind snowblower (which needs an oil change and it's snow cab fixed) that I use to remove the snow here, but my mother's yard a quarter mile away is a lot bigger and the wind whips the snow into really fantastic formations up there, so I need my tractor.  Badly.

 

It's starting to pile up out there, and it's still coming down.

Ernie looks different in this two-toned color.

Willie the Willow is not amused, either.  He's still green.  Weeping willows, love 'em or hate 'em, are a messy tree, but the first to green up in the spring and last to lose their leaves in the fall.  We love Willie.

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas.......and I'm not ready.  Way too much to accomplish out there.  Monday was nice, but Tuesday was an all day rain, gray, gloomy and in the 40's.
I couldn't be outside in the garden, but I did manage to clean the garage out and look what I found?

I plum forgot we bought this picture last spring.  We must have unloaded the car and put it on a shelf out there.   We were poking around in Goodwill one day last March (back when we found those chairs we repainted and reupholstered) and I found this picture which has so many of the elements I love: a farmstead, a windmill and an Amish gathering.  This scene is not at all uncommon in parts of Wisconsin. 

I noticed it was signed....and then I noticed the original price tag on the back of the frame, $178.00.  Wow.  I only paid $12 for it at Goodwill.  I decided to do a little research on the artist:

The late Steve Polomchak was the artist, and the title of this work is 'Second Sunday'. 

No, it's not the Mona Lisa, but I love it.  

'Tis getting close to the Season!

The temps are supposed to rise to the 50's this weekend......there's hope!

Now, where's my water pump?