I darn near violated one of my personal rules for this blog several times in the past month. Fall colors just beg to be photographed and shared and I became sorely tempted to do so. That may explain some of the recent lack of black and white photography.
I count myself fortunate to live in a part of the world where the fall season brings with it hillsides full of color. Every time I’ve lived somewhere that doesn’t have this like Northern Illinois (where you can only see one line of trees) and Oklahoma (where the scrubby trees may look nice for an instant on the lone day between summer and winter), I have felt out of place.
Fall hung around for quite awhile here in the Midwest this year. After a coolish August, temperatures remained well above normal for most of October and November. Peak fall color normally occurs around the late teens in October, but did not occur until about the first week of November this year. Our first hard freeze did not come around until last week <sarcasm> but this has nothing to do with climate change </sarcasm>.
I’m all for jumping on the climate change bandwagon until I realize that another month has passed by without filling my heating oil tank.
I raked the leaves in the yard here at Casa del Boss with the helps of Ms. Boss and middle two Bosslets. Believe it or not, this was the first year we did so. From what the neighbors tell me, the guy who owned this house in 1997 declared it a ‘nature preserve’ and stated he would not be doing any more yard work. Fast forward to when we first moved into the house and you could barely see our house from the street from all the honeysuckle and other weeds. Slowly but surely (and with increasing competence), we have reclaimed the yard from nature to the point where we finally had a ‘mowable’ yard this year. I’ve already killed my grass by not raking leaves once in my adult life, thank you to Ms. Boss reminding me that I really didn’t want that to happen again.
Today’s reward for a job well done? A cup of homemade cocoa from the hands of Ms. Boss. It truly defines unctuousness in a cup.
A bit of World Wide Web Wednesday for you on this Sunday afternoon: https://www.misterhoneysuckle.com. Got honeysuckle and want it gone? This is worth every… single… penny. I just so happen to have a neighbor that loaned me his for free.
Sometimes home ownership sucks. On the other hand, sometimes you go out and do some work that makes a huge visual impact like we did today and it feels really good. Now if I can only remember that next Sunday when the next round of chores come along…