A taste of fall

Today we enjoyed a taste of fall--about 77 degrees here in Columbus. Our noon meal we ate on the deck--grilled salmon with honey/cinnamon glaze, butternut squash, steamed cabbage, salad of orange sections and onion slices on fresh spinach leaves topped with shredded carrots. Bob got some chocolate chip cookies, but I'd already eaten 2 while baking them this morning. A perfect day. We began eating our main meal at noon about 6 months ago.

Today is November 1 and it's 80 degrees

We'll be eating on the deck this evening. Baked chicken, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, and chocolate pie.  I was looking through some October 2009 blogs and found a photo of our almost completed sidewalk improvements that apparently our wealthy suburb got from the ARRA, Obama's stimulus to get the economy going again.  Of course, the recession was over in June 2009, and has been the slowest recovery ever, other than the Great Depression, which FDR managed to drag out for almost a decade through government interference in the economy.  Since my husband's surgery, we've been doing a lot of walking.  I don't like to do the hill shown in this photo, so I walk south to the church parking lot and circle around, and he continues to the north to the next corner.

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/10/thanks-america.html

Everything is still green in Ohio

but it won't be long.

Fall color in Ohio

You don't need to go to Vermont to be a leaf peeper. The fall color this year is marvelous. This is Rose Lake in the Hocking Hills State Park. It's a 17 acre fishing lake, but isn't it glorious?

http://trekohio.com/2012/04/08/rose-lake/

http://parks.ohiodnr.gov/hockinghills

September, always a favorite month

When I was in school, September was always special—I loved getting back into the routine—seeing old friends, new books, fresh pencils and paper.  Now it’s a little different.  We come home from Lakeside Labor Day week-end and get everything unpacked, laundered, and put away, then begin with fall routine at church , committees, aerobics class and volunteering.  And because our anniversary and my birthday are within 8 days of each other there seems to a flurry of fun things to do. So that I don’t forget, and can bring the memories out like beads to admire, here is my September summary:

3rd: First aerobics class begins for the fall. Back to PDHC to volunteer after a summer off.

4th:  New class on Thursday nights at UALC Lytham taught by Pastor Eric Waters, The Divine Drama

5th:  Watching our old deck come down and our new deck go up.

7th:  New series in Sunday School class Lytham, UALC, with Steve Bruns

11th:  Trip to Blennerhassett Island in West Virginia with our Conestoga group.

12th:  Dinner at Rusty Bucket with our daughter.

17th: Dinner for PDHC at Villa Milano

19th:  Dinner with members of the UALC Visual Arts Ministry at Rusty Bucket with Ken and Connie, Steve and Tamra, Mary, and us. Free decadent dessert (for me) passed around the group.

20th: Trip to Mansfield, Ohio for Ohio Watercolor Society travelling show with Ned and Rosalie.

21st: Sunday brunch at our daughter’s home—with wonderful left overs for Monday—egg and potato/cheese casserole with ham, fresh fruit mix, biscuits, Irish coffee.

22nd: Lunch with Nancy at Old Bag of Nails.

25th: Emerson Burkhart show at Ohio History Connection with our Conestoga group with Joan and Jerry

26th: Dinner at Rusty Bucket (looks like we’re in a rut) with Joan and Jerry. Shopping for new kitchen appliances—double wall oven, microwave and dishwasher. Sticker shock, but needs to be done.

Update: The appliances at Best Buy came to right around $3600 with 5 year warranties. I wish we had 5 year warranties. New microwave, new double wall ovens, and new dishwasher. Now we have to shop for some wall tile for a back splash and new fixtures for the sink.

And of course, some spectacular weather, cool in the morning, high 70s by evening, perfect for walking our lovely grounds.

The Norway Maple

In the beginning God. . . made dioxobilane

"Bernhard Kräutler and colleagues at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, have discovered a new chlorophyll decomposition product in autumn leaves of the Norway maples. The new structure hints at a decomposition pathway dissimilar to that observed in other deciduous trees. "Essential pieces of the puzzle of this biological phenomenon have been solved only within the last two decades," explains Kräutler but he and his colleagues found none of the typical breakdown products in yellow-green or yellow Norway maple leaves. The main product was a dioxobilane, which looks more like a chlorophyll breakdown product from barley leaves or even bile pigments formed by heme breakdown." The Alchemist, The ChemWeb Newsletter

A fall treat--Dairymens Eggnog

"Pumpkin pie spice eggnog" is back in the dairy case. Boy! Is that good in coffee! I usually cut it with some milk, but it's still delicious.

Dairymens is a Cleveland company with quite a history. I buy it at Marc's, but don't recall seeing it anywhere else.

Late October Walks

In Ohio we had a very late spring, and a rainy August, and that has made for an interesting mix of colors this fall. No frost and not many storms have kept the leaves on the trees, although not as vivid as some years, with some still being completely green today. The maples are coming through for us, however. Our hydrangea bush didn't bloom all summer, then budded in September, and gave us 3 small blooms in October. The flowering crab apples, which usually drop their leaves in August and messy fruit in September are green and fruit-free. I've had some beautiful walks.

Maple on Lane Road

Late for the party?

Not so crabby and still green on Nov. 1

Along the creek
Now aren't you sorry you don't live in the Midwest?

To an apple

Oh Fuji, and Gala
Sweet Braeburn and Granny,
I'll return in the winter,
But for now, I will stray.

Be still my heart,
rejoice my taste buds.
It is the season
of the glorious Honey Crisp.