october in review

so much going on!   a stream of consciousness is all i can offer, and best represents what’s going on in my brain/life these days.

i was finally able to get out and make sense of my front yard situation (read: in an impulsive OCD move, i left work early and spent 2 and a half hours ravaging the dead plants, weeds, general disgustingness of the front yard.)  drove out to get pumpkins and two mums – one much larger than my head.  manically grappled with the crab grass threatening to totally overrun my lillies.  still not done, but feeling better about it.

in addition, i drove to charlottesville last saturday morning (10/31), took pictures for 4 hours of the cousin and her fiancee for engagement/save the date cards (hi ash and wes!) then drove back and planned a baby shower to be hosted the next evening.  after church, cooked allll afternoon for shower.  baby shower went surprisingly well – food edible, fun times had, many laughs laughed, many sweet, girly gifts opened and ahhed over.

garlic still not planted.  fall lettuce never got planted.  meetings on tuesday, wednesday, and thursday prevent such things.

ross and i got the proofs back on his new photography logo – we can’t decide!

little sister’s wedding coming up in two weeks!  crazy, freaky, exciting, weird, overwhelming!

we officially closed on our new mortgage – say yes to savings!

normal, sane posts are hopefully right around the corner…

image from here

bleak

for the past few weeks, i’ve been cringing every time i walk into our house. 

as beautiful as our little front garden can be at the height of summer, by fall, there is nothing growing.  i mean nothing.  and usually, to offset this, i spend a few bucks on some pumpkins and mums:  not this year.  or at least i haven’t yet.  so what i’m left with is an entire bed of dead summer flowers, and a porch with peeling paint and terra cotta pots filled with….dead summer flowers.  yikes.  bleak, indeed.  if i can work up the courage, i’ll take a picture of the whole embarrassing scene.

must make it a goal to research some fall blooming flowers friendly to our weather for next year.

frost and fall soups

first frost this morning.  not enough to need to scrape the windshield, but enough for me to go out a few minutes early to start up the car.  thankfully (and sadly) i had nothing left in the garden that needed covering.  next year.

ran a couple of errands after work that ended up taking 2 hours.  but at least they’re done.  and dinner tonight came together pretty quickly.  i picked up a lemon-pepper rotisserie chicken from kroger and served it with salad and a bowl of garlic soup over some crusty multigrain baguette.  perfect for a fall evening.  recipe here – although i’d suggest doubling or even tripling the recipe.

off to read in bed before lights out.

closing

Everyone’s been talking about it.  But I thought I’d throw my mournful two-cents in:  gourmet magazine is closing its doors.  it seems that this recession has seriously hit the magazine world hard.  i think a half a dozen or more big-deal magazines have closed within the last two years.  I only have one more issue to look forward to before it’s gone forever.  And it’s hard to say how much longer the website will be up, so I spent a weirdly frantic hour on Monday night saving as many recipes as I could (although I think they’re supposedly going to all be archived on epicurious.com)

in tribute, i may just have to whip up a little something this weekend from this fall’s issue.  not to mention that i had been addicted to this series all year.

 

image from here.

1096

fall is really starting to swoop in now.  we had a lot of gusty wind this morning and i realized that all too soon it’ll be leaf raking season again.  i’m not sure when peak color season is predicted to be for us this year, but the maples and a few other trees are displaying pretty bright colors already. 

i’m wearing a sweater for the first time this season and even though the rest of my winter wardrobe in packed away in a box in the attic, i imagine i’ll have to be refamiliarizing myself with all the long sleeves, thick sweaters, scarves, and coats sooner rather than later.

for me, fall has always carried special memories:  of football games, the acrid smell of ash from bonfires, sharp and refreshing air, the piling on of layers, the approaching holiday season, and food – always food.  but more than that, for 1,096 days and counting, it has carried the memories of a rainy, whirlwind weekend, where surrounded by my closest friends and family, i got more dressed up that i’ve ever been, and walked down the aisle to say yes, till death do us part, this is my solemn vow. 

the time since has gone by faster than i ever thought it would, but thankfully it still feels fresh and new, while at the same time feeling comfortable and safe.  our adventures thus far have been so fun – i pray that there are unending adventures to come.  here’s to three years and counting…  love you ross.

the day’s accomplishments

stocking up at the farmer’s market

finally clearing out the garden

celebrating nothing

nothing amazing to report.

just that i’m so happy it’s friday.

and that i have no travelling or other set plans for the weekend;  this is rare.  and a treasure that is to be cherished.

to celebrate the occasion, i think the hubs and i are going to have a little music jamout session this evening.  some dinner, maybe some wine.  and if the weather report is true, i’ll be diving into the garden tomorrow morning:  weeding, pulling up spent plants, and turning the compost pile.  just clearing everything out for the winter and putting it properly to bed so that it can be ready again next spring.  i’ve also got garlic to plant – the only fall garden item that i followed through on for this year.  ah well, there’s always next time.

both feet

happy october everyone.

it seems that i did not get the memo that we’ve decided to jump into fall with both feet.  at least that’s what these last few days have felt like.  even the leaves have to started to respond with a few splashes of color.  where have i been?!

yesterday evening i drove out to riner (heading out towards floyd) to pick up some plants a nice lady was offering up on freecycle (i’ll pretty much never turn down free plants) and the whole ambiance of the evening was breathtaking:  i let both pups come with me and cracked open the back windows so they could smell the smells as we drove.  it was only 6, but there was a definite chill in the air.  i was listening to iron and wine as i drove into riner and down the back roads towards the lady’s house – a perfect mellow soundtrack to the calm evening.  i picked up the plants without a hitch, and on the way back the sun was starting to set; it was just about perfect.  just another reminder of how much i love it here.

road trip reaction

i find that riding in a car for extended amounts of time has either one of two effects on me:

1. i become extremely tired and lethargic and don’t want to do anything but vegetate

2. i become strangely invigorated and have the desire to accomplish an inhumanly great number of tasks

sunday’s ride home proved to trigger the latter.

the weather, after having rained all day on friday and saturday, was gorgeous, which probably played a large part in my mood.  i got home, said hi to the husband, and immediately had to be outside.  i cleaned up the garden some, scrubbed out all my terra cotta pots for next spring, and planted a few plants i’d gotten off of freecycle two weeks ago.

the pear tree in our yard wasn’t a huge producer this year, but we hoarded away as many decent looking fruits as possible.  and since they were starting to go soft, i decided that it was about time for some pear butter.  but to take the martha stewart edge off of it, ross and i peeled, cored, and diced the pears while watching the Virginia Tech v. Miami football game we had missed from Saturday afternoon.  (and what a game!)  Of course pear butter then lead to pumpkin puree, as my entire pie pumpkin harvest (both of them) had been sitting on the windowsill for three weeks.  pumpkin puree also turned into toasted pumpkin seeds, but really that one was a no brainer.

and although at one point the kitchen resembled a volcanic eruption more than a room for cooking, i was quite pleased with the products of my sudden burst of initiative:

- 6 jelly jars of pear-cardamom butter.  recipe here.

- roughly 6 cups of pureed pumpkin to freeze.  from Luxury Pie Pumpkins grown in our garden.

- several cups (minus the handfuls i’ve already eaten) salted and toasted pumpkin seeds

- several dozen pumpkin seeds reserved for next year’s garden

there’s a lot more still left to do before all the sun (and light and warmth) leaves for the season, but every little bit helps.

weekend plans and random thoughts

although i’ll be sad to leave ross behind, i’m so excited to be travelling down to lake lure this weekend for my niece’s 1 year birthday party.  ross is shooting a wedding on saturday, so he has to stay.  and sadly, we’ll both miss the virginia tech – miami game this weekend.  (::nervous wincing face::  it might be for the best)

last night was a night of frenzy.  the highlight was a free dinner at the Farmhouse – a southern food restaurant literally located in a converted old farmhouse – for my organization’s 40th anniversary.  when that ended at 9 there was still some last minute birthday shopping to do before going home, finishing gifts, wrapping gifts, packing for the weekend, doing two loads of laundry, and getting the house cleaned up a bit.  we didn’t fall into bed until 12:30, and even though i was exhausted, i had started to get a second wind and couldn’t fall asleep right away.

miraculously, i rolled into work more or less on time and have been battling it out all day trying to stay motivated.

it’s very rainy today and looks to be rainy all weekend long, but its been dry for a while, so i don’t really mind.  makes me a little more ok with the fact that fall is coming.

this could be a product of my past three years of full-time mountain living, so don’t send out an intervention team, it’s just who i am:  i’ve become more and more enamoured with the idea of homesteading.

hello?

….is anyone still reading?

yeah, i said homesteading.

 

so homesteading (in 2009) mainly just means trying to live as simply and self-sufficiently as possible.  yes, i still live in the suburbs, and no, i have not joined a commune, but the idea of doing a few more things myself sounds rewarding to me.  i’d start with chickens if i could, but alas, my stupid Town Code does not allow them.  while i brainstorm ideas around this, i’ve started living vicariously through posts from here.  the author is a modern day “homesteader”, graphic designer by day, and writer for Mother Earth News.  She’s a real person telling her story about her real life experiences of balancing her tech savvy day job, with the experience of raising chickens, sheep, geese, rabbits, and a garden in Vermont.  how cool.

i’ve already got the garden part underway, now if i could just smuggle in some chickens…