Sploppy. I like the sound of that word I just made up to describe how the ground felt yesterday when it was done raining on us. Maybe you know what I’m talking about here. You put your foot down on what you think is terra firma but it sinks into standing water first with a plopping kind of sound. Water splashes everywhere. Splop!

This was the scene around my house yesterday. It rained. It poured. The wind howled around the house and shook it. The trees waved their branches frantically to and fro trying to go with the gusts, and thankfully all my trees stayed standing although we have quite a few branches and a few largish limbs littering the ground. It was downright nasty out there!

On Rick’s way to work a tree branch fell right in front of the car out of nowhere and he had no choice but to drive right on over it. Better that than landing on top of the car! Another man and his wife were not so lucky yesterday here in our little town. A tree came down on their car as they were driving on a road I was just on the day before. He did not survive and his wife is in critical condition. The helicopter that was called in to airlift her to the hospital remained grounded due to the violent weather.

Trees are a funny thing here in the East. I don’t know if it’s because they have a shallow root system due to growing in solid rock or what, but they are forever tumbling over in wind and soaking rains. They are something to be looked out for. They have a life all their own! It’s creepy. I stay out of wooded areas when the wind blows.

Power lines were downed, trains weren’t running, the airport had four hour delays, and the list goes on and on. A day for staying at home for sure!

We had 2.33 inches of rain in about an eight hour period. My driveway was a river! The poor birds were grounded. When we had a lull in the deluge they would show up at the suet feeder with their feathers all sticking out and soaking wet looking completely miserable. I felt badly for them. If it had been snow it would surely have been a blizzard.

And speaking of snow, we’ve not had any yet. Over the weekend we saw a few flurries but that’s been it. Nothing in the forecast either. Yet. Johnny won’t have his snowblower gear on for another week or so and I’ll be happy if it holds off until then.

And Christmas. Yikes. No decorating happening around here yet. Maybe this weekend. Somehow it doesn’t seem like it’s time for all that yet. Why oh why can’t they insert another month in-between Thanksgiving and Christmas? Can we move Thanksgiving to October? Please?

I will leave you with a sneak peek at my completed pottery project, the hand-built bowl. I picked it up on Tuesday and it came out gorgeous if I do say so myself! Follow-up blog with more pics coming tomorrow!

Reading over this post before I hit the “submit” button I realized that I was all over the place. One of those posts where when I sat down I didn’t know what I was going to say so you got whatever came into my early morning brain!

Last weekend we took the dogs down to Green Turtle pond. Our path took us through the woods. The dogs love being off lead.

They’ve been trained to not stray too far from us by handing out treats when they return to us every once in a while. Here are Hailey and Alex doing just that.

This leaf has obviously been stuck on this tree’s trunk for quite some time as the fungus has grown over it and imprisoned it.

A few more fungi along the forest path.

Of course the walk is fun, but the real reason to walk all the way down to the pond of course, is the water. It’s a race!

And one dog is out in front! Can you guess which one?

Aaahhhh ... water, Bella says!

The other dogs are content to just have a good long drink of the cool water at the pond’s edge but not Bella. She has to go wading at least three or four times, sticking her head under the water to take big gulps.

And just one more splash in a mud puddle before leaving the pond. Gosh this is fun!

And what fun is a walk if you can’t collect leaves in your tail and skirts?

Come on mom and dad,  hurry up ... I’m waiting!

Every time I take this walk I never fail to be captivated by the captive branches.

This braided one I am going to use as inspiration for a pottery piece.

All in all it’s about a mile and a half down to the pond and we all love the ability to walk right out our front door, down our street and into the woods. Lucky dogs; lucky us!

The other day I was grocery shopping in our local ShopRite. I was looking for a particular brand of rye bread that we have here in the east only I couldn’t remember the name. I know what the packaging looks like, no problem. But the name? Call it old age syndrome or whatever, I could not remember at the time.

I scanned the bread aisle in the section where it usually is, but no luck. There was a man restocking bread in the aisle, so I asked him. “Where is that really good rye bread hiding? Did you put it in another section?” He said something of which I didn’t quite catch the whole sentence but it included “Pepperidge Farm.”

“No, no, no,” I exclaimed. “NOT Pepperidge Farm, you know the really good Jewish rye!”

He looked at me kind of funny and said “Lady, I am trying to tell you that I am only the Pepperidge Farm distributor and I have no idea which bread you are talking about! If you could tell me the name though I might be able to help you.”

“OHHH ...” I said. (oops!) “Sorry! And no, I can’t remember the name just now. Thanks, I’ll keep looking.” And I did. I scanned that bread aisle from front to back and high to low, yet I didn’t see the familiar package on the shelves.

Finally I gave up and went back to where he was still restocking the Pepperidge Farm breads.

“Oh well,” I said to him, “I guess I am going to have to settle for Pepperidge Farm this time.”

He stood up, put his hand over his heart and said “OUCH. You’re killin’ me here! You’ve really wounded me. Settle for Pepperidge Farm? That hurts!” And then he laughed.

I picked up my Pepperidge Farm Whole Grain Rye bread and put it in my cart. He approved.

One of the many small reasons I love living where I do is the people I encounter every day.

The Pepperidge Farm rye was not nearly as good as this rye, which of course I remembered the name of once I got home. But please don’t tell him I said so!

The long shadows of fall are upon us and we seem to be caught in-between the seasons.

Most of our trees are barren now and we are transitioning between fall and winter. Today we had snow/rain/sleet all at the same time. Mother Nature couldn’t seem to make up her mind. It’s time for wood fires and cozy nights.

The time change nudges us along, forcing us to take up our inside habits with the earlier setting of the sun. The dogs and cats are really confused about when they should be fed and when they should wake us up.

Only a few short months ago we were still swimming in the pool at 8:30 p.m. Now we can’t even imagine that scenario as we are tucked cozily inside, either watching television or sitting around the wood fire exchanging chats with each other about how our day went.

All but one of our trees in the back has now lost its leaves. Our mighty oak in the back yard is our last holdout. As is always the case.

I love having this majestic oak presiding over our back yard but it comes with its minuses too. Like a sea of acorns.

The squirrels can’t even keep up with the abundance of acorns. The dogs go outside and munch on the nuts all the time. Here is one big nut: Bella.

Johnny does not pick all of them up so some raking will need to be done. I think this year the acorn production has outdone itself! Both with our big oak in the front yard as well as our back yard giant.

I’m ready for the transition of seasons. At least I’d like to think I am.

P.S. This post is for my sister who called today wanting to know if I had keeled over from all the hard work I blogged about in the last post because I hadn’t posted in so long. It’s nice to know my health is measured by how often I blog. Thanks sis for keeping me current!

Yesterday was certainly my day for yard work. I am not quite sure what possessed me to finish stacking the cord of wood we had delivered several months ago. I was just going to stack a little bit of it to make more progress. (Last week I stacked about 1/3 of it.) It was a nice sunny day with temperatures in the low 40’s by the time I started. The dogs helped. Well, sort of. Alex and Hailey supervised from the deck and Bella was a huge help in moving the wood piece by piece. The only problem was she moved it out into the yard instead of over by where it was being stacked! She happily chewed on bark while I loaded the wheelbarrow up, wheeled it over to the wood stack and started stacking.

I got one more row done and thought to myself “just one more wheelbarrow-ful to just get the third row started ...” After each consecutive wheelbarrow-ful I vowed it to be the last. The stack kept shrinking and shrinking until I could not leave that little bit unstacked. My back was aching but I persevered and before I knew it — violá! — the job was finished!

The last two rows were done yesterday.

Such a pretty sight to my sore back! Now I don’t have to feel guilty any more when it rains since the wood can be tidily covered up now.

That was the morning’s work.

Just after noon our lawn tractor Johnny (as in John Deere) returned home from his spa trip to Goshen, New York where he underwent a transformation. His return home has been greatly anticipated. He was being fitted with a new bagging attachment so we can now pick up all our leaves. For the past few years we’ve just been mulching the leaves, but our grass was slowly being smothered. Plus, it would take hours of driving slowly over and over the leaves to break them up enough. Tedious.

And my oh my do we have leaves! I think in some spots they are over two inches thick! You see, we hadn’t done anything about our leaves because we were waiting on Johnny and it’s taken several weeks between the time we ordered the bagger and they came to pick Johnny up.

The guy who delivered Johnny stayed to make sure I knew what I was doing. He shook his head when he saw the amount of leaves on the ground and told me I wasn’t going to get very far before I would need to dump the bags. He was right. I took one tiny swipe and jammed up the whole blower and leaf chute. I’m glad he was around to show me how to un-jam it! Plus he told me I should probably go over the leaves without the bags attached to mulch them up a little so there wouldn’t be so much mass. He demonstrated and bits of leaves, dust and anything else the mower picked up flew crazily through the air. Oh boy.

I knew I needed to get as much done as I could since we were expecting rain (and it is indeed rainy and dark out there this morning), so after a brief visit with neighbor Kim I changed into my old yard shoes and shirt and got started. I first mulched both front yards and it went pretty fast. The regular mowing blades seemed to mulch the leaves up better than the mulching blades! I kicked up a lot of dust and I think most of it was coming from the mulched leaves. A haze hung over the whole street. Quite the mess without the bags attached! I didn’t realize just how dirty a job it was until I needed to add some gas. I looked down at myself and was horrified! I was covered from head to toe in a thick film of dusty dirt. These pants were once black ... yuck.

Once I had taken the sheer mass of the leaves down, I put the bags back on and proceeded to pick them up. It worked like a charm except for a few times when I didn’t dump the bags as soon as I should have and ended up jamming the blower attachment, but overall it went very smoothly. And the end result was very pleasing!

Here are the before and after shots of one side of our front yard:

I only got one side of the yard completely done but at least the dirty mulching part of the job is completely done (at least in front). I wish I could have finished the rest before today’s rain but it was not to be. At least we don’t have that heavy carpet of leaves covering the grass anymore. The rest of the job should be easier. Next year we can keep up with the leaves as they fall and it should be a real breeze!

A very satisfying day of work.

Today I do not plan to be covered in dirt. No sir. I am going shopping to Garden State Plaza (the biggest mall in our area) with neighbor Kim. I hope to come home with a new pair of boots (thanks to the generosity of my in-laws). A perfect way to spend a rainy day!