... but not in December! Sigh. No snow and none forecasted. We’ve had over one inch of rain today and of course we had our annual festive dinner at Blue Hills at Stone Barns today. Also an annual event is, unfortunately, the rain. Last year the same thing happened. We had really cold temps last week but no moisture. The minute we get some moisture, the temperatures rise and it falls as rain instead of snow. The East is so strange. More tomorrow, but I just wanted to capture the rainy event today and as you can see by the photo I just took of our radar (see the blip?; that’s us in northern NJ) and the rain is moving south to north, we are in for a lot more rain tonight before it’s over with.

Geez I wish it would SNOW.

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!

Yesterday was pottery class day. I have to say that in a way I was not looking too forward to it. Which was silly, really.

We walked into the studio and there was my apple sitting on the table all nice and dry. Unfortunately it still looked the same as it did last week. I said as much to Kathy (the instructor) and she said “don’t be dissing your apple so much, everybody in the other class loved it.” I felt immediately better after that and even better yet when I saw what one woman in the other class had made last week. Yes, I felt much much better about my apple.

I took my cue from my other classmate and this week brought an old shirt to put on over my clothes. I was glad I did because today was sanding day for the two pieces we created last week. I was able to sculpt the apple just a tad but left some little dents since after all, no apple has a perfectly smooth skin. It will be fun to do the glazes next week.

As we worked we could see it starting to snow outside! The flakes didn’t last long before we heard the sound of sleet pelting against the studio windows.

I also got to see what my bowl looked like after it was turned out of its forming bowl. Not bad. Not bad at all! As I was sanding down the edges to make them smoother, some small pieces broke off from the rim. I wasn’t too worried as it made it look all that more artistic. Everyone else had done a different texture on each of their clay slabs that went into forming their bowl, kind of like a patchwork quilt. I guess I am a not a “busy” person because I used the same textures on each of my slabs. The look turned out very cohesive and because I varied the pattern it didn’t look too matchy-matchy. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that it holds together in the firing process. I wish now I had taken the camera to get a shot of it just in case. At least if it doesn’t make it through the firing process I’d have something to show for it!

Today’s project was making an extruded vase/bowl. We formed a base by tracing around an upside down bowl, then rolled out different lengths of coils of clay which we then wound around the base to whatever height we desired. I tried to stagger the beginning and endings of the coils so it would be more interesting. I am still debating how to finish mine off: whether to use a ravioli wheel cutter to introduce some texture like I did with a pot I made before (way back when), or to leave it in its natural form. So, since I was undecided I wrapped it in plastic to keep it moist until next week. I was kind of liking how it was looking in its natural state, so we’ll see how I feel about it next week.

I think I’m going to be sad when it’s over. Maybe I’ll take another round of lessons ...

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!