This is Mocha. He belongs to Monica, the lovely lady who runs the Great Hollow Wilderness program where we have our Homeschool Coop and take classes that teach us to love and respect the earth and survive out in the woods. I thought Mocha (despite the fact that he fits right into my fall color theme for the day) was so darn cute that he deserved his own post.
Just how can one small little dachshund pup contain all that cuteness?
Lucky for us, Monica was kind enough to share him for a little while. Can’t wait to see him again and get some puppy sugar! Thanks, Monica, for letting us meet and fall in love with your little guy!
This has been a particularly lovely fall. The weather has been blessedly mild and the leaves have been spectacular. However, due to time constraints and lots of rushing here and there, the opportunities to take pictures of the lovely foliage have been few and far between. So today, in celebration of the glorious light and the copper and gold leaves that are left on the trees, I grabbed my camera and took a few shots around Great Hollow.
Admittedly, there’s not much left of the leaves to shoot but I thought the bareness of the trees against the coppers and burnished golds of the leaves that are left made a lovely contrast against the blue of the sky and the fluffy white clouds.
And while inside, I’m cringing to think of the winter to come, I’m also celebrating the beauty of the New England Fall.
But who am I kidding? I will be out here as soon as the first snow falls, taking pictures of the winter landscape and loving it every bit as much.
I am knitting again. I thought I would take the time to mention it. It may not be such a big deal for you, but it is for me. There was a time when I wouldn’t go out of the house without a knitting project tucked into a bag in case I had a few minutes to spare with nothing else to do but knit. I made weekly trips to several local yarn stores and all the shopkeepers knew me by name. I always had more than one project going at once (how boring is it to only be working on one thing at a time?) I spent the time I wasn’t knitting, surfing the net, reading up on my knitting forums, and checking out the new patterns on knitty.com. Then I started blogging.
When I started my 365 Project almost 2 years ago, I was committed to photographing and posting at least one new picture every day for a year. Taking pictures, editing them and writing about them started to get in the way of my knitting. My needles started to gather dust and my yarn stash was getting lonely. My closet was littered with UFOs (unfinished objects.) I hadn’t started anything new, perused a knitting magazine or even realized that I hadn’t been getting any emails alerting me to the new edition of knitty in more than a year. Things were looking bad.
Funny, because after not having knit in more than a year (gasp!) I finally made it to the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. At the festival, I allowed myself to become giddy with the smell of yarn and the feel of knitting needles in my hands. I wandered through aisle after aisle of yarn, needles, roving, sweaters, hats, and all other manner of knitting accoutréments. After the initial moments of hyperventilation had passed, I purchased a few skeins of sock yarn in the hopes of getting my knitting mojo back and maybe — just maybe — picking up my needles again and knitting something from start to finish. It had been so long!
When I got home, I headed for my closet, organized my yarn stash, ripped out the few forlorn UFOs, went through my needle sets and started perusing books and magazines for patterns. Ah, the rush of starting out fresh!
This week, I finished a lovely cowl made of a hand dyed silk wool blend I had gotten at the CT Sheep and Wool Festival way back when and started on a pair of 2-at-a-time, toe-up socks for Clare with some of the newly purchased sock yarn. I’m going to have to rip out a few rows (no biggie) because I was a little to quick to begin work on the heel but despite that minor set-back, things are going swimmingly. I am already planning for what I will cast on next. This is a good sign that things are going well.
Here are my mostly companions sitting nearby as I take some early morning quiet time in front of the computer.
They’ve been out, breakfasted and treated at least a time or two and so they are willing to let me be for at least a little while.
No one else is awake just yet and I’m getting my brains ready for the week ahead.
There is school work to be done, chores, and Clare has a vaulting lesson and musical theater in the afternoon. Can I please use “Because it’s Monday” as an excuse to not get much done?
I can’t complain one iota about the weather we are having. Being at the barn in the crisp, cool fall air is a delight. It’s still warm enough to ride without frozen noses, fingers and toes and that’s all right by me.
Clare joins in with her vaulting class and I take some time to visit the horses. This is Archie, a Hafflinger cross. He’s a sweet old boy and loves to lick your hands.
The Friesians have their heavy winter coats and stare longingly into the pasture. Grazing time is over until the spring. I bet they miss the grass. I wonder what the horses think of Winter.
Clare was asked to help tell a story about Peace at our church along with a couple of other girls from her Religious Education class. She’s in her Halloween costume because the kids got to go through the annual Haunted House even though it was the day after Halloween and All Saints Day to boot. We Unitarians are a wacky bunch, aren’t we?
Then it was on to vaulting class. I thought it was our last class but it looks as though we will keep on going until it’s too cold and people stop showing up. Ok, I’m game!
Today we used 2 of the Friesians, Jorritt and Tammi. We’ve used Jorritt for vaulting but I’ve never ridden Tammi before. She is not the biggest Friesian at the barn but she is bigger than Jorritt. Just so you know, even though Clare is riding her with a saddle on, there are no reins and no stirrups. In order to mount, you have to jump up, throw your leg over and get on while another person helps you up. I admit it: I stressed out about whether or not I could get my fat old self up high enough without embarrassing the hell out of myself or killing the person who was helping me mount. But I managed to get on without too much fuss or injury to anyone involved.
I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but Clare wasn’t thrilled with the ride. Tammi is a bit challenging for a beginning rider. She’s huge and her trot is bouncy and while her canter is much smoother, it is pretty fast. But it was a thrill. I hope I get to do it again. I got right on Jorrit to do some vaulting exercises right after being on Tammi and my legs felt like such jello, I declined to stand this time around.
I am so very glad I got my chance to learn to ride and to be around horses before it was too late.
Lucky us! We got to celebrate Halloween twice this year and we had twice the fun. Our usual plans of heading into Norwalk fell through because poor Molly was feeling rather ill and not fit for company. Instead we watched old horror movies and had a quick dinner before heading into Newtown, the Halloween capital of Fairfield County. Those Newtown residents really know how to put on Halloween. The whole street gets into it; houses are decorated and ordinary citizens are magically transformed into creatures of the night. It is a sight both frightful and delightful all at the same time.
Ghosts and goblins peeped around corners and though upstairs windows.
Plenty of grinning pumpkins (some friendly and some scary) lit up the paths to people’s porches.
There was a spider on the loose and one poor family seems to have become it’s dinner.
Houses, once warm and welcoming, warned of dangers within.
While all the tricking and treating was going on all around, some old lazy bones chose to spend the night just hanging around.
Others preferred to party on well into the night.
When we had visited every single house open to us on the street, we put our masks away and rode homeward into the night to do as we were bid and Rest In Peace.
Jake and Flash are the official greeters as people arrive at the barn. Jake lives there and Flash just comes with his mom to visit.
Clare has had a busy few days and has declined to join me at vaulting. That’s ok by me; she will ride tomorrow and I can use some riding time for myself. A wonderful treat and we get to ride Oso, the horse I am taking my lessons on, for our vaulting class. I love Oso. Oso is a Spanish Norman and his brown winter coat is thick and full. After a good workout with the vaulters, he is damp with sweat and so Kirsten empties the indoor arena and encourages him to roll on the sandy floor. He finally does and then gets up and shakes himself off in a cloud of dust.
Oso is such a good horse. I love to watch Kirsten with her horses. She respects them so much and treats them so well. I feel really lucky to have found such a special barn.
Ok, I’m coming clean about this one and you’ll have to take it or leave it. It is what it is and I make no apologies about it. You are warned and I hope you are ready to hear this because it isn’t pretty. The thing is, as holiday time approaches, I turn into a Grinchy Grouchy Scrooge. While everyone else is getting all warm and fuzzy and carving pumpkins and getting their costumes ready for Halloween, I am just getting grouchier and grouchier by the moment. Thanksgiving right around the corner and then Christmas. Ugh. It pretty much goes down hill until New Years. So there you have it. I admit that I have serious holiday issues. But its ok, really. By January 6th (the day after Nick’s birthday) I’ll be ready to put away the Christmas lights and get back to my normal self again.
And so it goes. Despite the fact that I have a long list of other things I could be doing, today was the annual Halloween Treat Street and because I have a gallery right on the main street in town, it was time to smile and give out candy for a couple of hours in the afternoon. So I painted my face and put on a pair of kitty ears and headed for the store.
The weather was warm and that made it a bit easier for all the little ones to put on their costumes and trick or treat in the rain.
I wonder whether this kid would get out on good behavior. Does he have to turn over his candy to the warden?
I saw the Grim Reaper with his dad and a Star Wars Storm Trouper.
This guy must have come an awfully long way just to get a few pieces of candy.
Did anyone else notice that Elmo ate that baby?
Even a grouch like me had to admit that this was a little honey.
Isn’t this a little stinker?
So maybe I didn’t get to finish doing all the things I wanted to do today. And maybe I had to stand around the store handing out candy to a bunch of snotty-nosed adorable kids trudging up and down the street collecting crap candy. It wasn’t so bad. Really. After all was said and done, it wasn’t bad at all. I even had a little fun. And maybe there’s hope for the holidays to come.
I’m a gardener and I like ladybugs. Ladybugs are very handy little buggers to have around, especially if you grow roses. Ladybugs, you see, are awfully fond of eating aphids. Aphids, if you don’t already know, are awfully fond of eating roses (and many other lovely flowers.) But this is October and even my late fall roses are on their way out. So the little ladybug doesn’t have very much left to do.
I’m not quite sure why it happens, but everytime we have a warm spell in October, the ladybugs come out to swarm. In droves. They cover the siding of my house and crawl over windows and doors. Every time I come in or go out of the house, dozens of them fly in through the open doors. They land on the ceiling a crawl into every corner of the house. If you are outside and are standing still, they will land on you until you are covered in ladybugs.
After a day or two, they are gone. I suspect they have found a warm place to spend the winter. Some of them just fall over and sleep right where they’ve landed. I’ve been told that they are simply hibernating and not dead as they appear. I will continue to find them all over the house until the spring thaw. I’m hoping the tales are true and they will bring good luck. I could use a little of that.
Sage and Clare informed me that we needed to go back to the candy store, but this time it was in the name of science.
With list in hand, they perused the aisles until they had made their choices and then we headed home so they could work on the homework for their coop science class.
They mixed and poured and stirred and tasted . . .
Finally, voila!
A cell made from jello! Who knew science could be so tasty?
