Our backyard trees are full of apples and I’ve been picking like crazy.
Well no, I didn’t.
But yesterday I made apple bread and Norwegian apple pie, so that’s just as good.
Autumn in Maine is pretty damn fabulous, not to mention colorful. The trees are starting to turn, our neighbor is harvesting pumpkins from his fields and if you drop by the house this month you’ll be stuffed full of baked apple treats.
My glazed apple bundt cake is pretty special, although the secret ingredient may have something to do with it.
Have you heard the buzz about Pickleball and wondered what it was all about? Come learn to play this wonderful paddle sport, suitable for all ages. Taught by an experienced tennis professional who has become a Pickleball devotee, this class will have you playing in no time. Paddles and balls supplied. Bring tennis shoes to put on when you arrive (no street shoes allowed on the courts).
Another corner turned, another paper wall flapping in the breeze.
I am officially sick of vinyl siding.
If you’ve ever put it on, you know what I mean. If you’re thinking of putting it on? Don’t. Second mortgage the house, sell a future unnamed child… whatever it takes…. and hire a professional. Yes they charge an utter fortune, and now I know why. This stuff will drive you to drink.
Yes, he screwed that in place. And no, he was too annoyed to answer my innocent WTF question.
Hell, even the dog looked confused.
(Not ours, we were dog sitting for the farmers over the weekend. Dogs, chickens…. whatcha got? We’ll watch them all!)
Please let it be noted I cringed when I saw this –
Because when your husband pays $4,000 to fix scratches and paint his old truck? And then uses it as a workbench?
Grrrr.
But the back was finished…
With the third side well on it’s way.
And in case you’re thinking all I do is take blog pictures while he’s hard at work, think again.
I have to take up the mowing slack this project has left behind.
We live in the country, which means we have critters visiting on a daily basis.
We’re animal lovers, which means we love them all.
Raccoons, opossums, woodchucks, chipmunks, pheasants, fox, hawks, the occasional bear, one moose….. and yes, even the skunks.
They come to nosh under our bird feeders, nibble our blueberry bushes and raid our apple trees. We love it. And year after year, we get more deer. At times, we’ve had as many as 24 in the backyard…. which was glorious. They’re such graceful, beautiful creatures.
Of course they’ve also broke every bird feeder I’ve ever hung, which is why we started buying feed a few years ago and putting out a nightly treat.
Now before you pop an environmental cork, we are not subsistence feeding deer. It’s 2 little bowls with a few cups of sweetened grain in each. Not nearly enough to satisfy a single deer, no less a herd. They’re still feeding naturally, we don’t allow hunting on the property and neither do the neighbors, so we’re not luring them to their deaths. Think of it as an Oreo or two. They love it, and we love to watch them.
We have families with young spotted fawns, we have rugged old bucks with impressive racks and even one doe with a bum leg who we worried about the entire winter, but she survived just fine.
The herd tends to disperse in the summer and for the last few months we’ve only had 2 yearlings. But the other night we had 6.
Autumn is coming….
And we love our backyard.
🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌
Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 