vegetable

That's what I am today: turnip, pumpkin, eggplant. No, potato. On a couch. Moving nowhere, doing things like watching the clock tick forward, while my fingers click through hundreds of websites doing research here and there, useful, yes, but honestly -- I am not thinking of productivity of any sort, I'm just doing a good job of feeling retired.

In part, it's because the chill came quickly and I'm not yet used to needing a jacket to step outside. 

But to a great extent, I am just feeling the comfort of being totally unscheduled. Sure, I have a Zoom call in the afternoon. That is not what you would call an intensely busy day. 

I sit and click until Ed nudges me out of my hibernation. And so in the late afternoon we walk and slowly I warm up and and the couch receds into distant memory. 

He coaxes me to go back to the Hook Lake Wildlife Area -- just about ten minutes south of where we live. We could not find any access a few weeks back and so he went back to studying maps and DNR plans and now he is sure. Yes, there is a parking spot and yes there will be trails. Somewhat reluctantly I agree to give it a try. 

And what a surprise: there is parking space and there is a trail and because we are in the month of good colors, the walk is absolutely beautiful! Well over an hour, maybe two hours of hilly trails and we did not even push ourselves to do every last one of them. A few photos for Ocean:

It is remarkable how many hidden paths and secret trails there are all around us. If Ed wasn't so curious about the landscape in this part of the state, I would have never discovered half of them. And now we add this one to our dozen nearby hikes. We're already imagining how pretty it would be in the winter or spring, because yes, those seasons cast their own magic on the fields, lakes and woodlands up here in south-central Wisconsin.

There is a freeze warning for tonight. I don't think we'll quite hit a hard frost yet, but it doesn't matter: if not tonight then next week for sure. We are ready for it, though I do feel sad to be losing my pots and I clip a nasturtium posy and a dahlia posy tonight for the kitchen table because I know these are the last blooms. We're done with flowers for the year.

Ed in the meantime snips lavender. Remember the wee plants I put in last spring? In the end they grew big and strong and he asked me if I wanted to expand the lavender field with cultivated cuttings that we can overwinter under lamps. I thought about this and in the end agreed. If he picks and plants them, I'll tend to them over the cold months. 

And finally, he picks the dozen or so squashes that have been growing behind the barn. Me, I would love to roast them and perhaps puree them into a soup but my dear one does not particularly like squash so the challenge will be to create something that he'll find acceptable.

And now I am on that couch again, because, well, it's that kind of a day. Vegetables stored, flowers picked, furnace on, candle burning.