Sunday

Happy Halloween! May you have plenty of good toothpaste to work its magic after an evening of a sugar extravaganza!

I'm fully into the holiday today, except not the calendar appropriate holiday. We never get trick-or-treaters out here in the country and so were it not for the kids (more on that later), Halloween would not even receive honorable mention here. But I am fully immersed into Christmas. The family continues to grow and therefore, so does this grandma's cooking/baking/present procurement/etc/etc obligations. And with the impending (well, nearly impending) birth of my granddaughter and the travel that this will entail, to say nothing of the holiday disruption it will likely produce, one has to think ahead and strategize. 

So this is what I do for the better part of the day: I think and I strategize.

The day moves from being cloudy...

(and cozy indoors...)

... to sunny and Ed and I do go out in the afternoon. To work on the million tasks that accumulate for us out there. I finish bulb planting and I continue to bring down some of the perennials. Ed works on fixing rotted trim and then he helps me with raking the beds. Do you know how awful it is to have a female lotus tree growing adjacent to your flower fields? That tree drops seed pods by the thousands. True, the deer come in the winter to eat them, but believe me, we could feed the herds from here to Alaska and still have leftovers on the ground. Which of course sprout into a million lotus saplings right smack in the middle of my flower fields. So raking is a necessity and we started in on that job today. 

It's pretty and decently warm-ish for the last day of October. Honestly, for us here in south central Wisconsin, it's been an amazingly generous and beautiful month.

But as I dig, snip and rake, my mind is on the next holiday and the one after that. Plan and strategize, all day long. 

Except in the evening! Forget about Those Other Holidays! It's Halloweeen!

I go out to my daughter's neighborhood just for a little bit, to see them all in their regalia. There's a black cat and Applejack the pony and I believe there is a little lion in that car seat.

They head out in a small group of friends, parents, etc.

... But I'm told it's the two older girls -- Snowdrop and her school pal -- who stay out the longest, going from door to door with the zeal of two let loose gazelles. Bedtime was very very late today!

Here, at the farmhouse, the sun sets and we retreated to our usual quiet space. 

 

 

 

Ed shuts off the water for the hose outside. The long overdue night frost is finally going to hit us tonight.  We can start hoping for that first snowfall! Maybe before Thanksgiving, maybe after. Always exciting, always beautiful out here, in the country.