an awful falafel?

Pepita has gamely worn her donut...

...but now it's off and she's footloose and fancy free!

We've had our first frost...

...but she's still out on the trail.  I bought so many size S and M coats for her, but she's a lot more...stout...than we anticipated.  She's a short dog, but pretty stocky.  Still, a few fit.

Despite the frost, the days are warm enough that bees are still buzzing around.

A few butterflies and moths too, but mostly I find reminders that their time is nearly up.

Despite virtually no attention, we still have quite a few flowers blooming.

I'd planted morning glories in a pot by our porch in MAY.  All summer long, I hauled jugs of water for it, but we just had a lot of leaves.  Disgusted, I stopped caring for it in September.  The pot dried up.  The leaves drooped.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, it started blooming. 

Another head-scratcher...we didn't have any apple blossoms (or apples) this year because of a fungus.  However, six months late, we're starting to get a few blossoms!  Crazy!

We've been hearing coyotes almost every night, and close.  Deer regularly visit the yard, including this buck...

...with the same leg infection that we've been seeing all summer in local deer.

Claudia is thriving in the barn but refuses to go outside, even on nice days.  That's all right...we have a new feral cat to focus on!  His name is Falafel, a word that I think is really fun to say.  It works on two levels, too, because Todd isn't keen to have stray around...just in case Claudia decides to come out.  So he can call him Fal-Awful.  But I've already decided to feed and house Falafel this winter.  We've got stray cat houses and electric water bowls, so I'll set up a feeding station in our white barn.  Yay!

Just a little bit of yard work in these waning days of October...

But for me, the weather has turned and I'm mostly hanging inside with the cats.

Loving fall so much this year.

Have a great week!

plastic fantastic

 Major warm-up!  The clean lines on our frozen pond have melted...

...into a beautiful milky, pearlescent color.

It's been cold enough, though, for the nails on our porch ceiling to develop a thick coat of frost.  It always brings to mind Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter:  "The frosted nails in the roof above her were like white teeth."

Today, though, it will be nearly 70 (!!!) and all traces of our big snow will be gone!  

I've spent a lot of my spare time working on a puzzle this week.  Todd surprised me with a 2000 piece puzzle a month or so ago, and it was unusual in several ways...first, it was plastic.  Second, the puzzle was broken down into six sections.  I didn't even need my puzzle board.  I assembled it a section at a time...

...and finished the entire puzzle in a little over a week...a new record for me!

It's pretty big...29" x 24"...and the pieces are so sturdily locked together that not only is it easy to carry around, I think it might be difficult and time-consuming to disassemble.  To make it more challenging when I put it together again, I'm going to break it down into four sections, not six.

We have ventured out a little...to a Motown concert last night...

...but have mostly been at home. I've done a little knitting over the past few weeks.  I ordered some beautiful Malabrigo yarn...

...and have just finished a hat.  It's a pattern that I've knitted in the past for a gift, so I already knew that I'd like it!

I love the hexagons.

I'm working on matching mittens now.  I started a sweater at the end of 2024...

...but I quickly discovered that not only was I not fond of the color combination I'd chosen, the various differences in yarn thickness/hairiness was annoying as well.  I ended up frogging it back to the beginning of the blue pattern.  I'm going to start over when I feel more inspired.

I did buy some other beautiful Malabrigo yarn recently that might be a nice contrast to the gold...

Speaking of gold, Todd bought me a sweater-quantity of Malabrigo Rios for Christmas in the Frank Ochre colorway.  It is gorgeous!!!

I have THREE unfinished sweaters on hold right now...a white sweater that I decided to change the arm length on and got confused, so put it aside...a green sweater with a messed-up front panel...and now the sweater above, recently frogged nearly to the collar.  However, that isn't stopping me from starting a FOURTH sweater with the beautiful Frank Ochre.  ;)

We're continuing to have the most beautiful sunrises...

...and I'm really loving the slower pace of life right now.  For the first time in a long time, I'm reading after supper...always with a cat in my lap.  It seems to be the only time he's interested!

As nice as it is to be at home, I just got the okay from my podiatrist to resume walking again (as long as I complete a painful-sounding round of physical therapy to break up scar tissue), so I'm excited to actually get outside again! 

Have a great week!  

the best freezefest

Our cold weather continued until just a day or so ago.  The snow was so light and powdery that when the sun was on it, it looked like glitter.

Believe it or not, we are having mole activity!

The snow is still so beautiful, even though it's starting to melt.

front pond

another beautiful sunrise, set off by the white blanket of snow

ditto!  I call these "Lisa Frank sunrises" 

after the colorful junior high school supplies of my childhood

I'm determined not to be stuck inside no matter what the temperature - at least not all the time - so Todd and I went to FreezeFest this week.  It's a festival that our town throws that celebrates all things winter.  We missed the games and the chili cookoff, but we did see the ice sculptures.

It was about 15 degrees so we didn't hang around for too long, but it was really fun to see for a few minutes!

Like I said, we've mostly been staying inside.  Besides work, I finished two puzzles...

...and have gotten quite a bit of reading in.

always better with a friend!

Speaking of cats, they've been enjoying our piles of winter bedding.  It's pointless to make the bed, because there's usually a cat tangled up in it somewhere.  

Our BIG cat (the bobcat) is still showing up regularly on the trail cams, but I've gotten some really good coyote shots this week.  There's a pair and they're definitely denned up down by the back pond!  Here's one trying...and failing...to get some breakfast.  Whomp whomp!  

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We had a short but thick snowfall earlier this week...

...but it's finally warmed back up to the 40s and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while.  I'm hoping that we can start hiking again soon.  It's been almost two months!  

Have a great week!