Misty early morning sunbeams through my nearly naked trees this morning.

Let me preface this post by first saying that we have had amazing weather for the past few days. Sunny, warm (60’s and yesterday 70!) and low humidity. Just glorious! It’s hard to imagine that we had 19 inches of snow a week and a half ago!

The time change is wreacking havoc with our inner clocks. The dogs too. Mia is not happy either as Rick realized when he took her to work with him on Monday that she doesn’t like driving in the dark. We’ll still take her out on nice weekend days, but she’ll have to stay home at night now, tucked into her cozy warm garage.

Autumn is usually so beautiful here in New Jersey. That’s why it’s such a let-down this year. In the 5 1/2 years since we’ve lived here, this has been the worst autumn in the way of color. As you can see by the photo above, our trees are pretty much done. Whatever they had left in them before the big snow (and it wasn’t much) is gone now.

They never really changed this year. The leaves curled up and fell off. Some trees did try but their colors were not vibrant, just dull and rusty looking. It must have been all that rain we had. Like a house plant that’s been over-watered the leaves just fell off.

The two big oak trees are putting on a brave show in the front yard now. Still, you can see how spotted the leaves are.

The burning bush hedge is pretty showy too despite the fact that many of its branches were bent to the ground with snow not that long ago.

I love it when the sun is shining through the leaves. It also cheers me up, like it’s saying, “C’mon Lynne, autumn hasn’t been so bad—look at me!”

Our yard needs attention this weekend in getting all the leaves picked up. Johnny is back now from the Deere Hospital. I hope he rested up. He’s got a lot of work ahead of him! After some rain showers tomorrow, the weekend looks bright and beautiful.

When I named my earlier blog post the other day I’m sure you noticed that I had “normal” in quotes. It seems like things haven’t been “normal” here for quite some time. We had an earthquake, then Hurricane Irene. After Irene we had tropical depression Lee who dropped just as much rain on us as Irene had the week before! Roads are still washed out with gaping swathes where the pavement used to be.

Then we went to Colorado to the cabin. After being home for not quite two weeks we went to New Mexico. Then the big freak October snow storm comes along and dumps 19 inches of snow on our fair township and we are without power for four days. What’s normal about any of that?

Now we are finally feeling like we can settle down to normal New Jersey life again. I’ve been in the West so much lately that I am having a little trouble adjusting. But maybe that’s due to the power outage. It was strange, I have to tell you. But now at least we know what it’s like and that we can survive just fine on our own for a while. Any longer than four days might be pushing the limit. Especially in the dead of winter. If that happens and we know something is coming we’ll be sure and blow up the air bed beforehand so we can sleep downstairs in front of the fire. Just in case ...

Before we left we made sure to get up most of the leaves that had fallen. I’m glad we did because now we have more than ever. Too bad Johnny is in the shop—again. The belt on the deck broke again but this time there was a pulley that was broken as well. So, back to the John Deere hospital Johnny went on Wednesday. He’s due back mid-week but rain is expected by then. I’m sure the leaves will be taken care of eventually, but I hate to see them blanketing and stifling the grass.

This morning we will head off to the farmer’s market at Warwick in search of really good bread for our cheese fondue tonight. The market is looking very sad this year due to all the crop loss with Irene and Lee. All the squash and pumpkins were lost along with the other late season crops. It’s pretty slim pickins’. Usually we would take Mia but it’s pretty chilly out there. We’d have to bundle up for sure. Even our seat heaters and Mia’s adjustable temperature controls wouldn’t make a dent. Maybe we’ll give it a go anyway.

We should get out the chain saw and take care of some huge limbs but I don’t think either one of us feels much like it this weekend. Our beautiful big oak tree in the back yard suffered the most damage. A whole part of the upper trunk broke off plus a huge limb. It’s sad but we can’t see the damage too much from this side of the tree. A few other trees in the front yard lost significant portions of their tops, most of which ended up straddling the fence on neighbor Aileen’s side. Poor trees.

I did so enjoy spending alone time with my in-laws. I’ve never done that before and I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. We kept busy with lots of little drives around the area and eating great Mexican food. I’ll be sharing some photos very soon. We also had a special day where we drove to meet up again with Rick to the tiny town of Cloudcroft at an elevation that equals that of the cabin (over 8,600 feet) where it had snowed the night before. We ate a wonderful lunch sitting by the window watching the fog roll in and blanket everything in soft white and grey. Very magical.

on the way up to Cloudcroft

Rick and I then drove back together, stopping at White Sands (more pics coming of that too!) and Aguirre Spring.

Aguirre Spring is right at the foot of the Organ Mountains, but on the opposite side from the town of Las Cruces. Here are the Organ Mountains as seen from Las Cruces.

And a shot of them with the late afternoon sun on the opposite side.

The following two photos were taken at Aquirre Spring. It’s a beautiful place!

I rambled a lot more in this post than I expected too and was just going to talk a bit. Instead I ended up doing photos of my trip to New Mexico! Oh well. Sometimes it just goes like that. I hope you enjoyed both the rambling and the photos! More coming soon!

OOPS! I almost forgot! Did I ever tell you that my mother-in-law makes THE BEST Chile Rellenos in the world? Yum!!!!!!!

I have this strange urge to run around the house turning on every light and every single thing that is electric. I stood under the shower with hot water pouring out of the shower head for as long as I possibly could this morning. It felt so good to be truly clean again since it was Sunday at 5:00 a.m. when I had last felt that way. It was so nice to get up to a warm house with heat pouring out of the vents!

It really makes you appreciate the things we all take for granted. I’ve read a lot of books and seen many movies where people are struggling to live in a post apocalyptic world, and believe me, it felt that way to us this week. It makes you wonder what it would be like if something cataclismic did happen to our world and there was no longer any power, no gasoline to run our cars, no food being delivered to the grocery stores.

Yesterday when Rick got home from work he was very excited to see a utility crew working on our problem. We walked down to take a look. Lots of activity!

Several neighbors had gathered to watch. One neighbor who lives near where the trees fell across the road said that they saw the flash as power was lost. He also said he heard at the sound of tires spinning and took the flashlight out to see. The trees had crushed a car as they came down! The person in the car walked away unscathed. I think it must have been their lucky day!

We were optimistic even after we asked one of the crew if this meant our power would be back on shortly. He said non-committally “depends on where you live.” Both Rick and I pointed back up our road and he just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

One of our neighbors at the end of the road had just bought a brand new generator and it was chugging away. The opened box was still in his driveway. Rick had brought home a generator too on loan from someone at work. We knew this would guarantee that our power would come back on. It just had to!

When we got back to the house we checked the web site for Rockland Electric once again. It said we could expect to be back on the grid by 6:00 p.m. But 6:00 p.m. came and went with no change. We cooked by lamp light for what we hoped was the last time, then settled in by the wood stove for some good conversation.

You know how the story ends, so I’ll stop here!

What a year this has been for weather!

We are home and without power. One of our neighbors was nice enough to snow-blow a portion of our driveway so we could get in and I managed to get in touch with the cat sitter before she came to the house so I could ask her to leave the house key in the mailbox so we could get into the house. Usually we use the garage door, but of course with no power that option was out.

We cooked a meal of spaghetti on two butane burners that we keep for emergencies. Two of our lanterns worked and the other one needed batteries. We lit plenty of candles. We also had oil lamps but we had purchased the wrong kind of fuel for them so they didn’t shed much light, so to speak. We slept with an added duvet for warmth.

It’s so quiet. Almost like an end-of-the-world scenario in our neighborhood. Our neighbors across the street bailed out and went down to the their house on the shore.

Rick has no power at work so he is at home today. I guess we’ll read, maybe put a puzzle together.

The food in our freezer is now starting to thaw, so I guess we’ll BBQ chicken breasts tonight and eat up the frozen veggies.

We didn’t lose any trees but several large limbs are down and scattered around. So, with that we were lucky.

Not sure when our power will be restored so I might not be blogging since the only way we have of charging our cell phones and our iPads (without them we wouldn’t be blogging or have email) is to start up the truck and plug them in one at a time.

Oh the joys of camping within your own home!


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I don’t know what got in to the trees but all of a sudden they are changing like crazy. In two days they’ve gone from looking blah to looking like autumn. I drove up to Warwick to return something and I couldn’t believe the amount of color just since Sunday when we were last there. So pretty! I needed a camera in my forehead to snap photos as I drove by.

It’s been drizzling all morning, and after I came home I decided the dogs needed a walk since they were bouncing off the walls. A little rain wouldn’t hurt us! I’ve been taking all three together instead of just Alex and Hailey and then coming back and doing it all over again with Bella. Bella pulls so hard! But somehow when I have all three Bella is much better. It works, much to my surprise.

Some of the leaves in the road caught my attention, so after putting the dogs in the house I grabbed the camera and headed back out. The black “canvas” of the street sets off their colors.

I thought this one looked like a red chili pepper!

And this one like the feather of a tropical bird.

Raindrops caught plunking into puddles.

I’m still not sure about this autumn and its show of colors. We are supposed to get heavy rains tonight so that will certainly not help. Then, this weekend we are expecting very windy weather. I don’t think the poor trees have much of a chance of attending the autumn masquerade ball in full regalia.

Don’t cry little burning bush, there’s always next year!