I don’t have much to say lately. Sometimes I think I should just stop blogging. I mean, who reads this anyway? This blog was started three years ago when we first moved to New Jersey as a way of letting friends and family left behind know what was going on in our lives. I think that purpose pretty much failed since I know many of my friends just don’t read it. I can keep it for myself as an online diary but I could do that offline just as easily. I hate spammers leaving links to their websites embedded in comments. Just yesterday I had five; all of them total crap.

Rick is in Las Vegas this week at the trade show. I do miss him when he’s gone. A lot. Thanks goodness he doesn’t have to travel that much anymore. I opted not to join him this time as I preferred to go to Mexico instead and we couldn’t afford to do both. Plus, as much fun as Vegas is there is only just so much to see and do that you haven’t done before.

I always struggle with what to eat by myself. This time I thought I’d give some frozen dinners a try and ended up throwing the first one out last night (yuck) and the second one I tried wasn’t much better. I wonder how people can eat a steady diet of that junk?  Yet I always see people’s shopping carts piled high with just that. I think a grilled cheese sandwich would be much better and just about as easy.

I am so looking forward to our visit to San Miguel de Allende in less than two weeks and seeing my in-laws. It’s exciting to be able to see where they are going to live. When I tell people they are moving to Mexico some look at me blankly and ask me this question that I find hilarious: “What nationality are they?” Maybe it’s because Rick and I have lived as ex-pats in several “foreign” countries (Germany, The Netherlands and France) that I don’t find their move a bit odd. Who knows, in years to come we might find ourselves living in Mexico for the winter and the cabin for the summer.

We had our first thunderstorm of the year last night, and of course it was just as I was going to bed. At first I tried reading but with the light on I couldn’t really see the lightening so I turned it off and enjoyed the storm. By the way, does anyone have any idea why they call them thunderstorms and not lighteningstorms? The thunder was so close and so violent last night (not a word normally used to describe thunder but last night’s thunder can only be described in that way) that it literally rocked the house. It felt like an earthquake! My poor house trembled and shook at the concussive blasts. Wow. Mother Nature was sure having fun with us a couple of times.

I am proud to say that it was Bella’s first thunderstorm and she slept through it. Not really sure how she did because it was enough to wake the extremely dead. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced thunder like that. One strike must have hit on the ridge above my neighbor’s house because the lightening and thunder were pretty much simultaneous. So much so that it made me get up to look out the window to make sure their house hadn’t been blown apart by the blast. I kid you not!

Before the storm the peepers were giving a free concert. I sat in the sunroom with the TV off, door open to the night, reading my book. Their cheery trilling acts like a balm for me. I am always amazed at their froggy musical compositions. How do groups of them stop and start at the same time? Their harmony is spot on with one group carrying the main tune and other groups chiming in as needed.  Then all of sudden they all become quiet like someone turned off a switch.Do they have a frog choral conductor?

The peepers are only one of the things I love about living in New Jersey. (I mentioned above that it’s been three years since we moved here. Three years. Where does the time go?) Colorado was my home for many many years and I did love it but it was, well, kind of boring compared to living here. The seasons are so separate here and we have the fauna to remind us exactly what season it is. We have the peepers in spring. Next come the fireflies which arrive in early summer, June through mid-July. I wish the fireflies would stay longer because I find them so magical. When the fireflies leave it’s time for the cicadas to sing their loud scratchy songs from the trees. It’s the sound of summer.

I did finish my second “Down Mexico Way” dish towel and am onto my third. Here is the lovely señorita. Pollo anyone?

Okay, enough going on and on about not much of anything! On to the rest of the day!

Guess who forgot about setting the clocks back last night, both external and internal? That’s why I got out of bed at what I thought I was 7:00 this morning and jumped in the shower so I would be ready to leave the house at 8:30. As I was standing there with hot water pouring down over my neck and shoulders, Rick came in and told me that it was really only 6:00. Well, I was already wet so going back to bed was not an option at that point. So, here I am in front of the computer instead. Aren’t you lucky? This is one of those random-not-planned posts.

We have plans for today. We enrolled in a cheese making class at a creamery about an hour’s drive from here. We get a tour of the farm and then make our own round of cheese which they will store and age for us. I think we get to pick it up sometime after Christmas. Should be a fun day.

Yesterday we took care of all the leaves carpeting our front yard. I think they make a lovely carpet but if left they will kill the grass. In the two years that we’ve lived here we had someone professional come and blow the yards of leaves. It’s a lot of leaves! It’s also very expensive as you might imagine. This year we took Johnny Jr. (who has a mulching attachment) and drove very slowly over the leaves mulching them into tiny pieces that just disappeared into the grass. Good for the grass; good for the pocketbook. It worked like a charm. We’re very pleased at how well this worked. Here you can see before and after.

We also replaced our little wood stove in the sun room. It was old and tired and needed new stove black. You couldn’t dampen it down to burn efficiently and it ate wood like it was candy. Our new stove will burn very efficiently and heat the sun room and kitchen area very nicely. Here they are side by side for comparison. The difference is like night and day. (Pun intended as I took the photos at different times of the day obviously.)

The man who installed it is also the chimney sweep that didn’t show up last week in our deluge of rain, so that was handy. He took a look at both chimneys and gave us a reasonable quote for sweeping them soon. They need it if the amount of chunky soot that came out of the little stove’s pipe is anything to judge by. We need to break it in so we had two little fires in it yesterday. What a difference! The tiny pile of wood burned for a very long time, giving out the kind of warmth that only wood can provide. Cozy.

As I type our little turkey family is out there in the front yard pecking away at the seed I threw down yesterday afternoon. It’s pretty light out there now at 6:59 a.m.

The trees are still beautiful. The colors are now all burnt yellows and oranges since we’ve had some pretty good frosts.

Gorgeous color, crisp days, frosty nights and cozy fires. What’s not to love about this season?

Remember I posted about having seen a woodchuck in the yard a few weeks back? Well, he has obviously taken up residence with us since I see him nearly every day. Of course I named him Chuck, what else?

His favorite position is hanging over the fence rail looking into the back yard like he’s hanging out a window. I have no idea why he does this. It’s almost like he treats this part of the deck as his private balcony. His own little private view of the world.

His burrow is to the right of where he’s sitting, under the decking. At least I think it is because that’s where he always scurries off to. I have to be very sneaky in order to get photos of him. He senses me in the photos below.

I like having him around. Just another addition to our back yard menagerie. He may not be so welcome come Spring though if he eats my flowers before they bloom! Here he is seen from the other side in his favorite position.

Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile might remember the story in our local newspaper about the cow who escaped and was running loose in the woods surrounding West Milford. I kept looking for more updates in the paper but never saw anything.

That is until Rick was reading an article in the paper a few weeks back about some things in the old town records of 1834. Buried in this article after references to entries in the ledgers of cows going astray, was news about our runaway cow. Here is what it said:

“Calling to mind that everything old is new again, a 400-pound cow went AWOL after a western event at the west Milford Equestrian Center in May of 2007. Mounted volunteers combed the woods of the township in search of the missing cow and the saga was duly noted in the local press.

According to the Equestrian Center’s owner, Ella Mae Battipaglia, the bovine actually wandered back on it its own in August. Once trapped in a pen, and with some coaxing , the cow was eventually backed into a trailer and taken away.

It is believed that the heifer spent its time in the woods between Gould and Van Orden roads for those three months. It gained about 300 pounds on its freedom walk, however, which then begs the question: Do greens really belong on a diet plate?”

So, a happy ending for our runaway cow.

Salad anyone??

Just before the rain started in yesterday I spotted something in the yard. It looked too big to be a squirrel and it was grayish, standing up with its back to me. I got the binoculars out to take a closer look. Well, I’ll be—a woodchuck. The first one I’ve seen since moving here. I snapped this photo of him looking contemplatively into the back yard. He seems completely at home sitting there with his paws up on the railing. I think he’s adorable.

Shortly after this photo was taken, Hanna finally arrived. It poured sheets of soft, gentle, warm rain which came straight down with no wind. Our weather station was recording a little over an inch per hour. Lucky for us that she stopped in about four hours. Rain total: 4.39 inches!

The lights flickered a few times, but no power outage. I did have a few candles lit just in case, but we didn’t need them. We had some wind overnight but nothing out of the ordinary. Hanna was kind to us. She greened up our yard, filled our pool and made us all happy. I don’t know about how happy the woodchuck was about it all. I imagine he was pretty soggy wherever he was.