Tuesday

The internet's down. I'll go down to the basement and reset the router. I'm trying to not always ask Ed to fix things.

I pick up the black box that we perch on top of the water heater. What's the darn piece of plastic stuck to it? Or is it something else? It's a snake skin! A snake skin??? We have big fat snakes in the basement??

Ed!

He comes down to confirm my worst suspicion. I just rebooted the machine a few weeks ago so this is pretty recent.
A snake has passed this way fairly recently??
On the upside, they eat mice...

There is always an upside.


It's a brilliant day today.






It's getting cool, but not so cool that we can't eat breakfast on the porch.






And when I pick up Snowdrop after school, there isn't a doubt that we should spend at least a little time outdoors. The sun is strong, the leaves are gorgeous!

I take a different route today and we pass a house where some enterprising kid is selling pumpkins out on the front lawn (with a can nailed to the porch steps to collect cash when, as now, no one is there). Snowdrop had already been to a big pumpkin patch with her parents over the weekend, but she does love those pumpkins, so why not bring another one home?






This then will give us Part I of our fall colors on Ocean: Snowdrop among the pumpkins.


(Let's buy the very smallest one, Snowdrop. This one! It's only $1.)






(I appreciate your love of the bigger ones, but I don't think that one will fit in the stroller.)






(Oh dear. I do not have a single dollar bill. Let's go to the coffee shop where I can get some change! And yes, I'll get us an oatmeal raisin cookie.)






(Ready to go? We have to find the house with the pumpkins again so that I can leave my dollar.)






(She likes the pumpkins, but she also likes the leaves!)






(Are you sure we can't manage to haul these home, gaga?)






(Fine! I love my little one! Warts and all!)






(It fits perfectly in the toy stroller!)






Part II of fall colors? Well, it happened after my time with the little girl. Ed had taken a kayak out on a river that I had absolutely no interest in navigating. And so I had timeto kill before I needed to go home and start in on dinner.


I go to the Arboretum.

The light is so beautiful now, toward evening! Sure, the fall colors aren't at 100% (a website rates them at 75%). But for me, they are sublime!



Here we go, fall colors Part II:






(The wild turkeys again...)






(So pretty!)






(Gold!)






(And ruby red!)





Was it a grand day? Yes! -- snake skin notwithstanding.