Fall-ish

Some mornings of late have felt Fall-ish...there is a chill in the air, along with the scent of dead leaves.  It always comes as a bit of a surprise when Fall arrives, especially this year.  I still haven't had a summer vacation!  I am not ready for Winter yet, but as is typical, I am ready for the garden to be finished.

Things grew like crazy this year (except for weeds - I had very few in my garden this year), although the blueberries were sparse.  This week I processed 4 pounds of rhubarb, and I made 2 pounds of tomatoes into Gazpacho (which no one except myself cared for.)  I still have a big bag of jalapenos and cucumbers to deal with.

I also pulled the carrots and beets.

So I have those to deal with as well.

The pumpkins are ripening up...and taking over the top of my garden!

As of 3 weeks ago, I had 3 of them
weighing over 30# each!

L and I have been doing battle with the invasive and very nasty lanternflies.  We took an extension cord and the shop vac down to 2 trees at the edge of our woods that have been covered for two days in a row.  We sucked up hundreds of the little buggers into the vac full of soapy water.  As of yesterday, there are a few lanternflies remaining on the trees, but just a fraction of what there had been.

Carnage! 2 piles of lanternfly bodies.

Extreme Close Up

Speaking of insects, I noticed this lady on the back veranda.  When I got down on my knees to photograph her, she slowly turned and looked at me.  Isn't she amazing?

We have released the kittens from their cage, and they are now residing on the veranda, but wandering the grounds in between naps and eating.  Poor Fitz injured his toe and/or pad on one back foot yesterday, so he is limping around with a swollen foot.  He is getting plenty of healing rest as well.

L and I have been working in her room.  She has collected many, many piles of books over the past 2 years, as gifts and discards from the library.  They have been sitting all over the floor of her room for months and months because her bookshelves were full. J visited over Labor Day.  JP and I helped move them and their roomie to a new apartment the end of August.  They acquired a new bookshelf and wanted to take some of their books back up to the city with them.  Fortunately, this freed up some room to move some children's books (that L doesn't want to be packed up and stored away) into J's old room, leaving more room for L to shelve her books!

J had organized both theirs and L's books into rainbow order, which is visually appealing, but difficult to find anything.  After working at the library for 2 years, L wanted everything back in alphabetical order, so I spent a long time alphabetizing before we even began the process of shelving!  Here is the end result:

J's bookshelf...you can see that the 
top 3 shelves are in rainbow order.

L's shelves - alphabetized and categorized

Last week we received a package from Costco with an ice pack included.  Imagine my surprise to find that it was actually eco-friendly.  Nice going, Costco!

Sadly, my parents had to euthanize their little dog yesterday.  He was almost 15 years old, and had been in failing health for awhile.  There is another small grave under the oak tree in the Pet Cemetery now for Throckmorten P. Gildersleeves, Morti for short.

A Fresh Grave

I dug another grave today out under the big oak tree, where our Pet Cemetary has grown to include 6 of our pets.  We found L's bunny, Chaz, stretched out in his favorite spot in the grass, but no longer living last night.  He was 10 years old, which is at the upper end of their typical lifespan!

He started out as a 4H project for J when she was in 5th grade.  She did show him at the Fair in 2015, but then lost interest first in 4H, and then in having a pet rabbit.  When I finally got tired of taking care of him, J was given the ultimatum:  find a new home for him.  This is how L adopted him, and she has taken excellent care of him for the past 6 years or so.

Chaz was sweet and super soft, but not super smart.  He loved dandelion leaves, carrot peels and apple cores.

He would walk on a leash albeit tentatively.

He was interested in his visitors.

I enjoyed taking him treats and chatting him up while he nibbled.  He will certainly be missed.

Miss Elizabeth Bennett

We had a sad, sad weekend.  Our remaining kitty, Miss Elizabeth Bennett, or Lizzie for short, disappeared.

She was acting a bit strange on Friday evening, mouth breathing and not as active as usual, but still appearing happy to see us, and purring quite loudly.  I had planned to try to get her in to the vet on Monday morning.  But she didn't come back Saturday or Sunday morning, so the girls and I went out in the woods to search for her on Sunday.

We found her body in the little hollow in the brambles where she liked to hang out when it is hot outside.

I got poked and cut from all the twigs and brambles, but I was finally able to get her out.  We buried her under the big oak tree, next to her buddy, Ernie (and Kali and Zach and my parents' dog, Daisy.)

Lizzie joined our family after my dad inadvertently caught her in the raccoon trap as a tiny baby.  She chomped down HARD on my finger when I tried to rescue her, but we all fell in love with her in the 2 weeks that we kept her in a cage on the veranda and observed her for signs of rabies, so we ended up keeping her as a friend for Ernie.

The two of them spent a lot of time together until Ernie passed earlier this year.

Her favorite things to do were to find shady places to relax...

...and roll in the dirt...

She would also visit me in the tree house now and then, by climbing up the tree!

She went from being a scared little feral kitten in a trap, to the sweet and beautiful cat that spent a decade as part of our family.  We miss her so much.

Nine Lives

Back in 2010, a friend gave us 2 kittens, who came to be known as Bert and Ernie.

Bert disappeared long ago, but Ernie has been with us for the past 13 years until yesterday when the last of his 9 lives came to an end.

He was such a funny cat!  He loved lying on the woodpile in the sunshine.

He preferred to drink out of buckets, or with both front paws IN the water bowl.

He had a foot fettish, and if you let him near your bare pigs, he would be sure to bite them.

He was a good hunter, and frequently left "gifts" on our doorstep.  After he arrived, we did not have to worry about mice in the house any longer, even though he lived outside on the veranda.

His first buddy was Bert, but his longest friendship was with Lizzie.

Towards the end, he became very ill, but he would still purr, rub fur all over us, and drool.

I prefer to remember him like this:

Tiny Grandmom

My last living grandparent passed away this morning.  My grandma was 106 years old. She lived through 21 presidents and 2 pandemics.  She outlived 2 husbands and beat COVID last year.

When J was just a little tyke, she was trying to figure out how her great grandmother fit into the scheme of things.  She decided that her grandmother was "Grandmom," and her great grandmother was "Tiny Grandmom."  We have called her that for the past 16 years or more.

This is J with me, grandma and great grandma - a 
year or two before she dubbed her "Tiny
Grandmom."

In 2008 L and her cousin joined Grandmom and
Tiny Grandmom for photos.

The girls invited Grandmom and Tiny Grandmom
to a tea party in 2011

Grandma was the first person that I ever saw putting on make up.  I remember watching her when she and grandpa came to visit us in Idaho, when I was about 6 or 7 years old.  During the same visit, I was also pretty impressed that her teeth could come out!

Back in the 80's, after my grandpa passed away, grandma decided to go into Mennonite VS (Voluntary Service), teaching arts and crafts in a Nursing Home.  During that time, she learned how to do ceramics.  For many years, she made ceramic dolls, complete with beautiful outfits.  Most of her granddaughters were gifted one of her "babies."

JP was my "plus one" to my grandma's 2nd wedding.  It was one of our early dates, and we spent the car ride from Virginia to Ohio and back talking for hours and learning to know each other better.

She has been such an institution in my life, it's hard to believe that Tiny Grandmom is gone.  She lived an amazing life, and I feel so lucky to have been a part of it!

Holes

Kali didn't make it.  She seemed a bit better yesterday morning, but wasn't drinking again by bedtime.  She couldn't even stand this morning, and was jaundiced.

I took her back to the vet this morning, and she offered to admit her, but wasn't holding forth much hope due to her rapid decline.  Instead, we all said our goodbyes to her before heading to school and work, and I brought her home from the vet in a shroud.

Mom and Dad helped me dig a hole under the big oak tree where Zach and Daisy are buried.  When JP and the girls are home this evening, we will put her to rest there.

She is leaving a big hole in our family...bigger than the one under the oak tree.

Sleep sweet, Kali Gal.

Stella is gonna miss her too!

Chasing the ball was her favorite thing - she did it on Thursday.

Brother

JP's parents with his 2 oldest brothers, J (baby) and D (toddler)

 

We received the sad news today that JP's oldest brother suffered a severe bleed in his brain following a fall this morning, and has just been taken off life support.

It was an incredible shock, and we are all still trying to process it.

D was 18 years older than JP, and was long out of the house by the time I came along, but I felt accepted and felt loved by all of JP's siblings on meeting them.  I found D especially to be an extremely gentle, quiet, and unassuming man.  He and his wife always seemed to have smiles on their faces.

JP & D

 

I have great memories of a weekend that D, his wife and youngest son spent at our home when J was small.  He was always so very appreciative of everything we did or cooked for him!

 

We will miss you so very much, D.

Pee-U!

I worked out in the garden most of the afternoon.  Whew!  It was a hot one today!  Now, I'm not smelling so good, and I'm a bit itchy and sticky.  Time for a shower!

The girls and I picked strawberries again.  We got about 2 1/2 gallons.  I think we've harvested almost 9 gallons out of the garden between my Mom and I, and there are still many more to go.  Hooray!  We used to pick 25-30 lbs of strawberries every summer at the U-Pick farm about 45 minutes north of here.  I discovered 2 years ago that they charged MORE for me to pick my own strawberries, than our local grocery store charged.  That was my impetus to grow enough of my own strawberries to be DONE with those fools!

I did some weeding out there, and planted the last bed of corn, as well as replanting some of the beans.  We found a Swallowtail caterpillar on the parsley, and L moved it to her butterfly habitat so that we can watch it change.  I picked some lettuce and peas for dinner.  The Bee Man came to harvest honey while I was working, and he gave me some honeycomb.  I feel rather rich this evening!

Every time I take my camera out to photograph the new Chicken family out scratching, they run and hide.  All seven peeps are doing just fine.  (I finally tossed that last egg on Wednesday night, it was a dud.)  I think you can see most of them in this photo.

My Dad commented that these peeps are so much quieter and calmer than the 3 dozen we purchased as day old chicks last Spring.  We think that must be the influence of Mama Hen.

The rose that I dug from my friend's garden last summer bloomed this week.  The flowers were so heavy that after a rain, they hung down to the ground, so I cut them and brought them in so that we could enjoy the sweet, strong scent inside for awhile.

One of the families that moved away last summer came back to visit this weekend.  We invited the rest of the gang up to Poplar Ridge for a pot luck.  It was so lovely to have T back with us, even for a short time.  We ate until all that was left were a few crumbs in the bottom of the bowl of chips.

Sadly, the mother of one of my dear friends passed away this weekend, so our gathering was bitter-sweet as we all felt her heartbreak in our midst.  I didn't know her mother well, but she was one amazing woman, who owned a little piece of heaven up the road by a bubbling stream. 

My parents were away at another funeral today:  my great Aunt was killed in an auto accident earlier in the week, and her husband was injured and hospitalized at the same time. 

It struck me again, as I worked in the garden today, the mysteries of the cycle of life.  New plants are growing in my garden, and old ones are becoming more beautiful and productive.  There are bright green striped caterpillars that in a couple of weeks will become beautiful black and yellow butterflies.  At the same time, the end comes for some.  I feel overwhelmed at times like this with waves of both sadness and gratitude.  

Daisy Dog

My parents little dog, Daisy, passed away this afternoon after a short illness.

She was a brave little thing, friendly and bright.  It's amazing how big of a hole a small dog can leave in your life, but we will all miss seeing her sweet little face.

Maybe she's out there somewhere now, chasing deer...her favorite past time.

Sleeping in a sun beam

Snuggles with J

Daisy, Grandmom and L

Zach and Daisy



Another tiny grave under the old oak tree