Fertilizer Friday: November 4

How hard it is to think that November has descended on us already.  The weather Monday through Wednesday of this past week was dismal; that is, unless you are a fan of gray drizzle and cold winds; then you would have been ecstatic.

I'm sure there are people out there who enjoy dark, drizzly days, sort of like Morticia Addams of the Addams Family used to adore stormy weather, do you remember that show? And how she cut off the nasty rose flowers when arranging her thorn-stemmed bouquets as her husband Gomez, snazzily dressed in his smoking jacket, adoringly ogled her in her long, black dress.  'Cara Mia'........oh, sorry, yes, I know, yet another reference to an obscure TV show, but the weather the first part of this week made me a bit batty, and besides it was Halloween.  I was baking cookies the other day during the rain storm and started laughing when I remembered that line, "Are these cookies made of real Girl Scouts?"  Never mind.  Like I said, I was bit batty.   (Dang Retro TV.)

Last rose of the season...Red 'Knockout', my apologies to Morticia for showing the 'ugly' flower.

Finally, on Thursday, the weather took a turn for the better.  And I took a turn for more energetic and headed out to do battle with the fall cleanup.  AND, Carl came home from work at noon to surprise me and to help.  Hey, hey, doesn't get much better than this.

Oh, it is high time to put the River Bed out of it's misery, don't you think?  The Inca marigolds gave it their all, but even they have to give up sometime. 

And the hyacinth beans on the trellis were causing the trellis to lean in a most unsettling manner.  Yup, high time to nip this situation in the bud, er, the vine.

Note to self: For more effective Before and After photos, please stand in the exact same place for each photo and please select either Portrait or Landscape as a picture format.  (Sorry about that.)

There, the River Bed was finished, now what about the Pan Fountain?  

It appears to be full of leaves at this point, but the sound it makes is still pleasant (unless you need to use the restroom) so we will leave the draining and hauling of the pans to storage to a later date.

It appears the pathway between the garage and the house is completely exhausted, too, time to go.

Ooooops, by the time I took this picture it was too dark to see the cleanup was done (and I still wasn't standing in the same spot AGAIN, but take my word for it, this area is finished, too.)  I may wish I'd cut down the miscanthus here, especially when in a few short weeks, I'll have to maneuver the snowblower between them on my way to the chicken coop and my winter walking trails.   But hey, it makes for so much Winter Fun to have the long grass wrap all around the snowblower auger parts, oh, you'll never believe the Joy.  Why, I may even break a safety bolt on the blower and have to replace it in -20 degree weather; gee, things to look forward to.  On second thought, maybe I'd better whack those grasses down.

Ok, which bed to attack next?  We looked at the Escarpment:

Looks sorta pretty on this side.  Yet.  Let's see how the other side looks:

Oh, well, hmmmmmmmmm, not so pretty.

The hostas have given up, they are really, really Tired.  But now I can see the rocks, always a plus.

They still do catch the light though, despite being bedraggled and besmirched.  We decided to let this garden go until later on.

Strolling past the Quarry itself, we both stared at the waterlilies.  Who wants to wade in there to cut them back?  Anyone?  Anyone?   Well.  Fancy that, no one wants to wade into a nice, cold pond on a 48 degree day.  

I guess we'll take a canoe later on.  Or a kayak.  Speaking of the Quarry, the rudbeckias are still blooming.  Talk about determination.

Their numbers are dwindling, but there's still yellow there to be seen.  And a lot of cleanup, too.

One lonely campanula still doing it's thing.  I love blue flowers.

And blue skies!  (And rocks.)

I spotted our birch tree over by the barn when the light hit it just right around 4PM.  This was the beacon that led Carl and I to go to work over in that part of the yard instead.  Doesn't matter where we work, really, it's all got to go anyway.

There's that blue sky again, and the weathervane my father-in-law, Don, made for us years ago. Right now the weathervane is on a pole, I'm thinking it would look great on the stone house.  Speaking of good ol' Castle Aaargh......look at all the rock we have to pick up yet before the snow flies.

I didn't think we were THAT messy while we were working on it, Wow.  Seems like we quit whacking rocks a long, long time ago, but in reality it's less than two weeks.  

I miss working on Aaargh so much.  I had such high hopes to be farther along with construction.  But Winter waits for no one.  We were talking about it this afternoon; if (and that's such a big word) IF the weather is good in April, we could start to run mortar then, but if April of next year is like April of last year (we had 17" of snow at the start of the month) that won't be possible. 

We do have a garden walk here next June, how nice it would be to have the stone work done by then.  (Now I have a song by the band Super Tramp running through my head, "Dreamer!  You're nothing but a dreamer.")  Some of the visitors were here when we started the castle in 2005, so they will be amused to see the progress or lack thereof.  Hey, we tried.

Now, kindly go and get me a pallet, I have to pick up the rocks so at least the lawn won't be dead in a hundred different places.

Carl found one very tired and tatty clematis still blooming.  Poor thing, frozen and chomped on.  But still gorgeous.

We still have to get all the flowers out of the Formal Garden, too.  But with this lighting, you can't even see them.  I like this lighting.

Carl planted asparagus last fall just because he likes the texture of the foliage.  Nobody around here eats the stuff, we just like looking at it.  Sure is hard to photograph though; it's so spindly and ferny.

Sweet alyssum still blooming, but I heartlessly yanked it out.  I know, how could I?  Meany.

My urns looked so forlorn after all the annuals were yoinked out, so my GADS got the better of me again and I cut some hydrangeas to stuff in them.  (I was supposed to be cleaning out beds, not playing urn decorator.)

The grass is 'Red Rooster' grass....if you look real close, you can see another rooster:

Oh, that noisy bugger!  He may well be Thanksgiving dinner if he keeps up with the yodeling every five minutes. 

I don't imagine the hydrangea flower heads will hold up to snow, but I like the way they look right now. 

Adds a touch of class to the River Bed....ok, maybe not class, but adds Something to the bed, how about that?

Another urn, another dilemma, Quick!  Get me a pot to put that variegated ivy in to winter over.  Temps are dropping to 29 degrees tonight, we can see our breath already at 6PM.  Thank you.

 Gotta keep moving, our hands were getting really cold, head through the Egress Gate and let's cut all the hostas down.
 

Whose idea was it to plant all of these things?  Oh, well, we're not going to make it tonight.  There's always Friday coming up.

Most of the corn is off our field, too:

The shadows are long, the sun's going down.

Red sky at night, Sailor's delight.

Hope the old adage is right.

We have a LONG way to go yet before we can rest.

Don't forget to head over to Tootsie's at Fertilizer Friday and see what beauty is blooming in gardens from all over the world!

Have a great weekend!

Word 4 Wednesday: Ephemeral

Donna over at gardenwalkgardentalk has selected the word ephemeral for all of us to ponder as to  how it relates to our gardens and lives:

 Ephemeral: having a very short lifetime or existence; not lasting.

Donna captured the word perfectly, her images are amazing, defining the essence of the word in pictures alone.

I'm going to attempt to write my post on ephemeral too, but it will (as usual) take me a lot more words to do it.  And please forgive another sappy post from me, but lately the Sappies have overtaken me, I fear.  It's been a rough fall.
 

This post is dedicated to our late, great, cat, Screech.

 Screech was a part of our family for so long, ever since a cold, early spring day in 1994 when a stray female wandered into our yard and within a week gave birth to two of the cutest kittens I had ever seen.  I know, all kittens are downright adorable, but these were extra-special.

One was a dark gray tiger-stripe kitten and the other was a pitch black one with just a touch of white on his chest and on his underbelly.  Sadly, shortly after the kittens were born, we came home from a Sunday drive and found their mother had been hit by a car crossing the road in front of our house. The two little kittens were now orphans and I was their newly appointed foster mother.  I wasn't so sure they'd survive since they were so young, but they soon caught on to licking the bread I'd soaked in warm milk and meat juice several times a day and after a few weeks, they were eating from a bowl on their own.

Our boys were little fellows then, too, Joel was 8 and David was 4.  Joel named the gray tiger-stripe kitten Charcoal, and four-year-old David decided the black one should be called, of all things, Screech.  The name fit perfectly due to his raspy voice when meowing for attention, and believe me, he loved attention!

All was well with our two little furballs; they would run around and play and tussle in that goofy way kittens have.   We could not have a cat in the house, though, due to David being highly allergic to them.  Within a minute of exposure to their soft fur, Dave would be extremely miserable, though he loved them so.   We fixed up a little box in the garage for the kittens to sleep in, lined with an electric pet bed.  

The two kittens were inseparable and they were also the tamest, most calm felines I had ever known.  Charcoal used to climb into my five gallon weed pails as I weeded in the garden and every time I'd put a weed in the pail, he'd pop up like a jack in the box to attack.  I'd simply tote him around in the pail as I moved around the garden.  Screech was always content to be just a few inches away, batting at my hands and trowel as I worked.  Such a pair they were. 

But sadly, Charcoal's time on this earth was ephemeral.  One day we were getting ready to go canoeing and had the trailer up in the driveway so we could load the canoes and other paraphernalia needed to take a little float trip.  The kittens were now half-grown and were playing around near the trailer for awhile and then made a mad dash to the back yard, chasing each other headlong into the flowers.  I lost track of them after that, and when some friends of ours arrived to go canoeing with us, we set out in the lead, towing the trailer down the road.

What we didn't know was we had two stowaways onboard the trailer, Charcoal and Screech.

When we arrived at the river to begin canoeing, our friend told us what had happened.   

"Did you guys know you had two cats on the trailer? A black one jumped off just past your mom's house and rolled right off the road into the ditch.  Then about three miles later on the highway, another one jumped off the trailer, too, but was hit by your tire.  Sorry I couldn't get your attention.  I didn't even know you had cats," he said. 

This was in the days before cellphones--oh, how handy a cellphone would have been back then. 

The boys and I were devastated.  I felt so bad, I sat down and cried and both of the boys did, too.  We wanted to go home right away, but we had driven a rather long distance and our friends were along for the canoeing trip, so we made the best of it and went anyway.  That was the longest canoe trip of my life.  

On our way home from canoeing we took the same route and found poor Charcoal lying on the center line of the highway.  We brought his body home and held a tear-filled funeral that night.  Before laying Charcoal to rest, we looked for Screech as we drove but there was no sign of him anywhere.    We were all so sad, and I was blaming myself.  Why hadn't I thought to check the trailer before we left?  The cats had climbed under the upside down canoes and had been hidden from our view, but I should have checked.   Hindsight is always 20/20.

We were still crying over Charcoal's burial but we needed to find Screech.   The boys and I walked down our road looking for him, calling his name over and over.  We were hoping against hope that he might still be alive and were doubly worried he was injured and suffering.  We called and called for him and just as we were about to give up, Joel heard a faint, hoarse meow coming from the woods near my mother's house.

There was Screech, huddled at the base of a big tree, too terrified to come up onto the road.   I went to him and he nearly leaped into my arms.  Though he was scared, he was miraculously unhurt and started purring immediately, pushing his little face up into my hand to pet him again and again.  He lapped up all the milk and attention we all gave him when we arrived home. It was truly a miracle he had survived the fall from a trailer going 30 mph. 

 

Screech was lonely, but he was fine.  I took him to the vet and had him checked over and then eventually we had him neutered.  The biggest danger for outside cats is being run over by a car, but never again did Screech trust moving vehicles.  He would look both ways carefully before crossing our quiet side road and if a car was even in the next mile, he would wait for it to pass.  He often accompanied me on my walks, it was comical to see my two Shih Tzu's, Teddy and Pudding, on their leashes trotting along with Screech right in the middle.  When he heard a car coming, he would be down in the ditch immediately, long before I even noticed it approaching.  Moving vehicles would never harm him again.   

We have a lot of visitors to the gardens, and many of them weren't crazy about felines in general and/or especially black cats.  In fact, some people were highly superstitious and a few were downright afraid of him.  The only thing they had to fear from Screech, however, was his raspy meow as he begged to be petted.  He was a complete and total ham.  How he loved attention!  When we had wedding parties here for photography, I'd have to go and get him because he loved to be in the photos, too.  He even plopped right down on one of the bride's wedding gown trains for a little nap while the photographer was setting up a shot.  He didn't do any damage and she thought it was cute, but I had to carry him around with me for the rest of their visit so he'd stop being so pesty. 

Anytime I was outside, Screech was with me.  He was a much more faithful companion than even my dogs are.  Long days spent weeding in the garden would always be sweeter due to his presence.  I'm home alone day in and day out, but with Screech around, it was never lonely.  He would simply doze on a rock or nearby on the lawn and follow me where ever I went.

Whither thou goest.......Screech would go.

 

He was so good with the hens, too, and would never harm a feather on them.  Every morning, we had a ritual, I would go out and open the chicken coop door and Screech would accompany me, sitting up on the fence post out by the coop and observing the Girls as they marched out on their way to start the day.  Then it was time to feed Screech and he would go and sit by his bowl and wait for me to give him his breakfast and, of course, some loving.

Screech bringing up the rear, on his way to breakfast.

Always patient, always loving.

Whenever I'd go out to whack rocks for Castle Aaargh, there he'd be, sitting on the wall, observing me.  Even with all the noise, he was always nearby, always ready with the affection.  He was a big kitty, weighing in at a whopping 20 pounds at the vet, which made him twice the size of our dogs.

We'd had Screech here with us for so long, and I know we took him for granted.   But it was becoming apparent already last year, when he turned 16 that he was getting old.  He still was as loving as always, but time was taking a toll on him.   

 

He wasn't quite as frisky as he'd always been, and laid down a lot more, basking in the sun.  His need to give love never left him though.  In the picture above he is basking in Dave's attention back in September.  

There were days I saw him move much more slowly than he used to, especially in the colder mornings earlier this fall.  

The last close-up photo of our dear Screech.

When we had those frost scares earlier in September and I was out covering everything with my fabric stash to save it, Screech was following me around like usual.  I do remember petting him that morning and he 'talked' to me with that raspy meow of his, shoving his head into my hand for the extra-hard face rubs he had always loved. He wasn't particularly interested in his breakfast that morning, but I didn't think too much of it.  He was an outdoor cat, after all, and was a good hunter, busy keeping our pest population down.

Little did I know this would be the last time I'd ever see him.

  

 When I was looking for pictures of him,  this was the last one I found.  

The next morning when I went out to let the girls out of the coop, no Screech came to greet me.  I called for him, but heard no raspy voice calling back.  I searched high and low for him, but came up empty.  He was not to be found.  When Carl got home from work, we looked around, but still, nothing.  Carl comforted me by saying maybe Screech was out hunting, but we both knew the truth.  He was probably gone forever, but we worried, had he been attacked, or stumbled into a trap in the woods, or was he hurt, unable to come home?

I grew up on a farm, and as a result, have seen life go full circle so many times.  On a farm you just cannot get attached to the animals as if they were pets, because the heartache when you lost one would soon do you in.  You care for your animals, but you can't afford to get so wrapped up in them as you would a special pet.  We had many cats on the farm when I was growing up, and it was not unusual for them to simply disappear when it came their time to die.  Many animals sense their impending death and go off alone.  This is what I'd hoped had happened with Screech too, but it didn't make his loss any easier.

I was in love with this cat, and it was so hard not knowing what had happened. 

Finally, a week later, I was in the garage and found him.  He was lying in a concealed cranny between some pieces of lumber, just like he had laid down for a nap. At first I thought he was just asleep; he looked so peaceful.  Oh, the tears flowed then....Joel was home and we laid our dear kitty to rest right next to his brother, Charcoal.  

For seventeen years we had the pleasure of being owned by our sweet Screech.  They say you own a dog, but a cat owns you....and that's true.     

 Screech had a face and a loving nature that could melt a heart of stone.

Ephemeral:

 having a very short lifetime or existence; not lasting.

His lifetime wasn't long enough, but Screech's memory will live on forever in our hearts. 

Rest In Peace

Screech

1994-2011

Read 'Em All Tuesday!

There's another brand-new meme over at Tootsie's:

Read 'Em All Tuesday!

The rules of this game are simple:  Choose a blog you love to read (that's the hard part, I love ALL the blogs I read!) and write a post and then link to the party so everyone gets a chance to visit a blog they might not otherwise have known about. 

Tootsie flat-out floored me by picking my blog for her first post (bless her heart!) and I was so honored it took me awhile to calm down.  (Tears again....goodness, I should own stock in some tissue company.)

But I don't have time to be misty, I have to get this post up and running and here we go:  Drum Roll Please:

My first pick for Read 'Em All Tuesday is Alison's excellent blog over at:

Bonney Lassie

Just read her own description of her lovely blog:

My husband and I moved here to Washington state in the Fall of 2008, after more than 25 years living in the same house in Massachusetts. We lived in a rental house here for about a year, and have now bought a house, in August, 2009. I want my blog to chronicle the process of turning our new yard into the garden of my dreams. One reason I was interested in moving to Washington was for the great gardening. A dream come true!

Alison takes her readers on tours of public gardens, flower shows, greenhouses, garden walks, and best of all, her own beautiful garden which she is lovingly and expertly developing as time goes on.  It's so much fun to see her before and after pictures and her always exciting and (to me) exotic plant finds.  I am in awe of Alison; she left her garden in Massachusetts behind and started all over again in Washington---completely different climate and so many new plants to learn about AND she takes her readers along with her on the adventures!

Alison and I have never met, but like all the other gardeners I have been following, I feel she is an old friend (ok, not OLD---sorry, Alison, we're both just young chicks yet, right?) 

If you're not familiar with Bonney Lassie please do go and visit her wonderful blog and see what you've been missing. 

You'll be glad you did!

And thank you again, dear Tootsie for the new party to join up with and for the honor!   

Getting misty again....

A Geo-ing We Will Go

Happy Belated Halloween!

After my long, drawn-out woe-is-me-fest of Friday, Joel hijacked Ann and I for a little adventure on Saturday, a Halloween Geocaching Event.  He seemed to know I needed a break from gardening, building ruins and feeling sorry for myself, not necessarily in that order once again.  (And also because his girlfriend had to work, lol.)

The weather on Saturday was just gorgeous, just the right touch of cool and crisp and yet warm and sunny and with a slight breeze.  Wonderful weather for working in the garden, too; I had a moment's trepidation about it, do I want to go and have fun in the sun, or stay home and deal with the mess here?  And yes, it was a debate, believe it or not.  Carl, saint that he is, decided to stay home and work.  That added to the guilt factor, but in the end, you know what I did.  Ran away.

The adventure, if Ann and I chose to accept it, was to go along with Joel to the far away land of Fond du lac County and geocache our way along a trail strewn with caches leading to the grand finale of the day.  There were a lot of people drawn to this event from all over.  I am not a registered geocacher, but go along for the ride and love to take pictures, so this worked out great.

We all met at a park which is part of the Niagara Escarpment,  and after a search, found the instructions on what coordinates to locate that led to the final destination.

Joel and Ann are in the lead walking along the trail.  I'm either lagging behind, because I saw something I just had to photograph:

 Check out this mushroom......ok, 'mushroom' is probably a bit too generic a term, I'm sure it's has a proper botanical name, but I'm not a Fungi Fanatic, so have no idea.  I just thought it was amazing.  (And a little creepy.)  Oh, and by the way, there is my cellphone in the photo, too.  Isn't it photogenic?

I usually catch up to Joel fairly easily since it takes time to locate many caches.  That's why I don't worry about holding up the show too much; geocaches are not placed to be glaringly obvious, especially to my untrained eye, and take some time to find.

And sometimes that means going places I would rather not.

Carry on, Joel, I'll watch from here.

There were all age groups at this event, from very young to even older than me.  I was following a gentleman and his probably seven year old daughter for awhile and was amused overhearing her constant commentary on the day's events.  She was so excited to be on this trip especially since it was Halloween themed.

"Daddy, look at those trees.  Don't they look kinda scary?  I'm glad we aren't out here at night, aren't you, Daddy?  This would be too scary at night, don't you think, Daddy?  Would you want to walk through here at night?  I wouldn't, Daddy."

The little girl was right, some of the trees really did have Scary written all over them. 

Outstretched arms, waiting to nab an unsuspecting passerby.  Walking this trail at night would be unsettling and downright dangerous.  Joel and Ann were on another trail along the field searching for caches while I cut through the woods.  Just as I rounded a corner after ducking some overhanging branches, I looked up and saw this about five feet in front of me:

Whoa!  The first step is a doozy!  Right beyond the grass is nothing but air.   

 I looked across the chasm (cool word, eh?) and saw Joel and Ann on the other side.

Our next mission was to figure out how to get to the floor of the quarry.  People were wandering around in circles, trying to figure out how the man in the lawn chair at the bottom got down there. You can barely make him out in the photo below, but there's a guy seated down below, waving to all of us.

I headed off on my own, up and over a small rock ledge and found myself on a trail that was getting boonier and boonier the further I went along with downed trees and big rocks littering the trail.  Finally I came across a crevice (boy, I'm just full of the fancy words tonight) and thought maybe this was the way to the bottom of the quarry.  But then I remembered what Joel said, this was supposed to be a walk 'for all ages'.  Well, that didn't look too 'all ages friendly' to me.  I was going to call Joel to see if he'd found the way down yet and that's when I noticed my cellphone was not playing nice.  

I hate to admit it, but when I saw my phone wasn't receiving a signal down in the hole, I was a little uneasy.  And that uneasiness is so silly.  For 51 years, I did not have a cellphone.  How did I survive that long without being in constant connection with the outside world?   (Since there is no 'sarcasm font'---I think we need one, don't you? ---I'll tell you that I'm kidding here---) I was a little ashamed of myself because, really, I'm unnerved because I can't contact anyone right away?  Wow.  Time to hitch up the big girl pants and calm down the heart rate, I'll be fine.

I was a little disappointed in myself,  I find it amazing how fast I became addicted to technology.  There was plenty of wood all around me, I could always start a bonfire and send up smoke signals if I absolutely had to.  Except I forgot matches.  I never did master the art of starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together; I have problems starting our campfires at home with a propane torch.  Wow again.  Better find my way back to the rest of the herd, apparently I'm not cut out for roughing it.

After a ten minute walk I was back to the edge of the quarry again.  There's the other folks, signing the log books and visiting.  I knew there had to be a better way to get down there than the way I had been trying....and finally I found it.  (No, I didn't jump, either.)

Joel and Ann had already found the trail and were down there waiting while I was wandering around in crevices a half-mile away.....Lewis and Clark wouldn't have liked me for a guide back in the day. 

I was amazed there was no water in this quarry, but I suppose the bedrock has so many cracks in it that it can't pool. 

The final cache was behind this big rock, ain't it a beauty?  Joel told me to go take a look at a beautiful geode that was on the backside of the rock, so I dutifully climbed up to take a look.  I wear trifocals now, so I have to watch my step and was looking for a good place to put my foot.   When I finally looked up, a guy in a skull mask and black cape jumped out of the space in between the big rocks.

"ARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!" he yelled.

Aaargh?  I thought, huh, how did he know about Castle Aaargh?  Must be a Monty Python fan.  (Or maybe he reads my blog?)

If it had been dark out, I may well have peed my pants, or been needing a jump start for my heart but for some reason he didn't scare me as much as having a dead cellphone had earlier, so I just said, "Hi," and then tried to look past him to see the geode.  That was when I heard Joel laughing and realized there really wasn't a geode.  Darn.  

I should have asked the Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh ghost guy to stand next to me by the big rock, but he had to go back to his post, scaring the next people to wander back there.   

Isn't it amazing how trees will sprout and grow in the most unlikely areas?  When was the last time you ever thought about planting a tree between a rock and a hard place?

It was time to leave the quarry and I reluctantly did, but it was difficult.  I was sad that Carl hadn't come along, but he and I are going to go back there very soon, when he heard about it, he was rarin' to go.  I know, we're weird.

 In the picture above, you can see Joel's reflection on the stone wall of the quarry as he takes this final picture of the quarry that day.


Back to the car we went:  Joel and Ann had other geocaches to find in the area and I was sitting in the front seat with the camera at the ready, looking for interesting stuff.
We were zipping down the road when I saw something.  Turn the car around, Joel, there's an interesting thing right there...another stone house ruin!

Oh, boy, isn't this one pretty, too?  I really liked the architecture on this home, it has good lines.  It's smack-dab in the middle of an encroaching industrial park, so it probably won't be here for long, but at least we have some pictures to remember it by.

Switching over to the higher-powered lens let us get much closer, but once again, how fun it would have been to poke around in this ruin.  The stories this one could tell, too.  Look at the size of the stones over the windows. 

I really liked the roof line and peak, too.  The stonework itself looks very good yet, what a shame it was abandoned.

I know it's hard to see from this picture, but look at the thickness of the wall of the house where it's exposed near the peak.  (Wouldn't you know I didn't think to use the zoom lens for that shot?)  Hard to think about this home being torn down.  Couldn't you just imagine this place being part of a haunted house tour?  Hmmm.....wandering around in the old house at night......bats swooping......missing floor boards......guys jumping out and yelling Aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh........

The little girl on the Halloween Walk was right.....this trek would have been too scary at night.

At least for little old ladies like me.

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh.