Bonus Days

The leaves are down and autumn is over (or should be) and winter is knocking at the door.  

But not yet...

The garden is a blank slate, ready for winter or actually, ready for spring.  Because it seems like I should go out and start planting something now, since we've had a week of gorgeous 70 degree weather.

All that is left in the garden is a decent stand of lettuce and a few herbs to get us through to the bitter cold.

Since the weather has been so awesome, it has triggered a sort of spring cleaning spree.  Or maybe a "just before winter" cleaning spree?  It was a weekend to wash cars and the lawn mower.  Pull all of the area rugs (6 rugs!) out and shampoo them.  Open the windows, air out the house, and mop the floors.  Projects like sanding the scratch out of the butcher block top on the kitchen cart got done out in the driveway.  Everything came off our wooden kitchen counter tops and I washed the cabinets and counter tops down with Murphy's Oil soap, oiled them and buffed them to a nice gloss. I realized that in a few weeks I will want to start decorating for Christmas, which always causes me to deep clean the corners.

One garden project that got started is replacing the lid on the water tank with something lighter.  The current shake shingled lid weighs nearly a hundred pounds and no one ever looks forward to removing it for maintenance.  I dug out 10 year old decomposed mulch from around the frame and used it to fill in low spots in the raised beds.

We recently had a whole house generator installed next to the basement bulkhead.  Power outages are more frequent and longer lasting here in town so now we are ready for winter come what may.  I love the clean look of our reconstructed deck and walkway and the generator blends in just fine.  And I've already had the opportunity to practice shoveling the snow!  Much easier with this set up than before.

I don't mind some winter rest, and now we are all spiffed up and ready for more cold, wet weather.