Home again, home again,. . . .

Finally home from work mid September (can you believe I haven't posted in so long?) and I have WAY too much to do in garden and house - not to mention the business.
But when daughter and son-in-law invited me up for a couple of weeks I couldn't resist. Had a wonderful time with the babies!! I came back home Oct. 26 and woke the next morning to this!

Of course, it didn't last. Most melted that day and the rest the next day. I have been madly trimming bushes and plants out of the yard and garden. Nearly filled our large trailer. I really need another couple of full days to finish, but the weather is raining today, and supposed to change to winter now. I may, or may not get back to finish. Oh, well, there is always spring.
I really love the fall colors and bedding down the garden. There is something very satisfying about trimming everything and having it ready for the snow. If the above had lasted the limbs would all have broken.
Now, I should just mention that I am still learning quilting. Didn't spend enough time on it while the Census was going on, but now I work on something every day. I do need to do more hand driven practice, but Things are looking pretty good. More about that later.

Weathering the weather

We woke to this in the backyard this morning,
And this in the front yard.
We knew cold weather was coming, for a few days, so we picked all the apples, plums, most of the grapes, and all the red tomatoes. We spent Friday and Saturday bottling and drying the plums and grapes. Still need to do the apples. We made a lot of grape juice from what are actually table grapes. We just mixed the varieties as they are on the arbor, so the juice turned out to be a lovely rose color.

Weathering the weather

We visited my in-laws in Florida this past week and while there we went to Homassassas State Park. Our favorite thing at the park were the alligators.
While there we visited some birds, including waterfowl,
fish, ( I know this is a terrible picture but I took it through the thick glass wall of an underwater tank. There are tiny little fish swimming upside down along with the big fish)
Manatees, (He is feeding them and there are two or three gathered around but I couldn't get a great picture since they went back below so quickly!)
this is another try at catching a manatee on film.
other species native to Florida.
We also visited the beach, and our very favorite at Homassasas State Park


The baby alligator. In Florida it was warm, 85-90 degrees, and the humidity was quite high. I would come home from a simple morning walk covered in sweat. What a difference!