What a difference two weeks away makes!

Yes, we've been traveling...a major road trip!  Our main destination was Boston to visit Younger Daughter and see the sights, and we did that and had a great time.  A first visit to Boston is overwhelming with the combination of all the history and culture, combined with all the possibilities for shopping, restaurants, city tours and harbor cruises.  And we filled our days with all of those things!  We parked our car at our B&B and then she helped us get from place to place using the "T", the Boston subway system, along with lots and lots of walking!  Remember the Kingston Trio song about the M.T.A. and Charlie who "couldn't get off of that train?"  Well, Charlie is a key symbol for the "T" and we rode the trains using our "Charlie Card" all the days we were there.  We had a great time in Boston!  More about our trip another time.

We left here on the 22nd of October when Port Wing was still in the middle of beautiful fall weather.  We returned home yesterday to signs of major winds and everything definitely looking like November.  Much had changed in two weeks.

No, that's not snow, although they had some snow in the last week.  That is milkweed fluff (seeds and carrier fluff) from our remaining milkweed plants.

Here they are still connected to the pods on the plants.  Yes, it's true...I really enjoy milkweed plants in all their stages!

And here is what's left of our herb beds.  The summer savory is surprisingly purple, a couple kinds of oregano, some nice rosemary and parsley like crazy!  I think we have more tabouli in our future.

We planted this before we left.  It is our first attempt at planting garlic.  We got some tips from our friends up the road and a key point was to get the bulbs planted either before or after October 12th.  And because we couldn't remember if indeed it was before or after, we decided to plant them right ON October 12th.  Stay tuned...

Big changes up in the meadow, too.  The trees are still full of apples, but now looking a little strange with all the leaves gone.  The word is out that we have lots of apples up there so now people are asking about getting some for deer apples.  Hunting season, you know.  It's coming soon!  Time to get out the blaze orange jackets.

So...we're glad to be home again!

Days to remember when winter comes

These last few days have just been too beautiful for words.  We just want to soak them in and save the memories for the cold days that are bound to come soon.  But we made good use of the day, too.

Our B&B guests left just after noon so there was some laundry and clean-up time after that.  Love that clothesline!  Leann suffered through another Minnesota Vikings game but then went up in the meadow with a friend from town to pick BUCKETS of apples.  I think there will be a few pies and other treats coming from those apples!  Then late this afternoon we finished pulling out all the tomato and the rest of the beans, as well as masses of flower vines from out by our sign.  We finally had a pretty frosty morning a couple days ago, so that signaled the end of our gardens.

And before the sun went down, we took a quick trip down to the Lake and found these beautiful scenes from the slough backwaters.  The picture above looks to the east and below looks to the west...obviously!

This week will be exciting when our old house finally gets moved to its new home just down the road.  Tuesday is the scheduled date with Wednesday as a rain day.

And finally, finally, last night I finished this puzzle!  You might not think by looking at it, but it is the HARDEST, most poorly cut, most frustrating puzzle I have EVER done.  I have done a Jackson Pollock puzzle that wasn't this bad!  The pieces were all basically the same shapes and except for the quilts and browns of the cabin were all a mush of blues and whites!  And even at the end I had one piece that really didn't fit where I put it but there was only one hole left!  I'm passing this one on to some other unsuspecting puzzler.  Any takers?

Autumn - More fun in the sunshine!

No posts since September 23rd?  Must be the weather.  I think the weather was cloudy and rainy all last week.  Every day.  Clouds and rain and cold.  And on Friday many places in Minnesota and Wisconsin had snow.  In fact, Leann took this picture as she was going through Barnum, MN, on her way home from Rochester on Friday:

This weekend was the big Bayfield Apple Fest--a whole weekend of apple treats, apple orchards, parades, music and all in idyllic Bayfield.  The weather this year was almost a carbon copy of last year with the cold, rain and winds.  Not so idyllic for Fest visitors but Lake Superior was really showing off for all the guests!

And today, we had sunshine!  So we took the opportunity to start putting away some of our garden spots for the winter.  And here are some of our carrots.  We REALLY need a root cellar because we haven't even started with the potatoes.

Several times in the last two weeks I've picked what I thought would be the last tomatoes before a frost, but still no frost.  So we have tomatoes spread out in various flat surfaces around the house, all in shades of greenish-yellow to actual red, ripe tomatoes.  I canned another 13 pints yesterday and will be able to do that a couple more times.  And then we'll put the rest out by the road with a "Free" sign.

Late this afternoon, we took a ride in Cammie up into the meadow behind our house.  It was very wet from all the recent rain but we wanted to catch some last colorful maple trees before all the leaves are gone.  And the sun was shining, the sky was blue...in case this is the only sunny day we'll have!

 There are SO many apples up there and they are really good considering they are wild, volunteer apple trees.

I suppose the trees are just as pretty on cloudy days, but it was nice to see the sun!

An autumnal equinox to remember!

Sometime last week I googled "first day of autumn" to see on which day it fell this year.  And I was surprised!  First day of fall on the 23rd?  That's rather unusual, isn't it?  Shouldn't it be the 21st or 22nd?  And then I mentioned it to a few people, including our neighbor in 4th grade.  And I still didn't think it was right and wondered if I was leading him astray.  But then today, there is was on Google's search screen--Google was celebrating the day with an animated logo.

And we've had the most beautiful days of the whole summer in the last few days.  Perfect temps, not a cloud in the sky, perfect fall days.  So here are a couple pictures of fall around the farm:

 The leaves changing colors is really just starting.  This next weekend should be really colorful, and on into October.   So now the maples really show themselves in among the pines and apple trees.

And it's probably because of all the rain we've had, but there's such a variety of mushrooms, including these little orange ones.

And check out this sunflower stalk!  That's about 10 sunflowers on one stem!

 And another one.  We'd better get those heads off, at least the big ones, and put them out for the birds.

And for the first time in many years, the apple crop is CRAZY!  Even the wild ones up in the meadow are good this year.  It must have been a perfect combination of weather and...weather!  There's no other explanation. 

And this has nothing to do with fall, but a result of moving the old house off the foundation.  The power to our little maple sugar shack, and to the old garage in the background, all came through the old house.  So when power was cut to move the house, we had to reconnect those buildings to our new power box.  And that involved trenching to lay wire to those two buildings.  And that leaves us with more grass to grow.  We almost had all the bare patches growing nice grass, and now we start again.

Since he trenched through the site where the barn used to be, he also dug up a bunch of old rocks from the barn foundation.  That field stone just isn't very pretty.  Our excavator was pretty insistent that we needed to collect those rocks for some other project.  Since he was the one who did our rock work for our garden in front of our house, we took his advice and here are our new rocks to put to use somewhere.

Happy Equinox to all!