Fall, Glorious Fall!

Time seems to be racing along. It’s hard to believe fall has arrived! Labor Day is over. Winter colors are back in. It may even be time to put sandals away. And on que, the weather turned cooler. Tuesday after Labor Day was our last hot day. Then clouds rolled in and dumped 3.25 inches of rain in about 24 hours. Now it’s about 50 degrees at night and 75 degrees in the day and lovely. Leaves are starting to fall on the lawn.

We had a lovely weekend with Jonathan and Kristy and family and Deborah and Ian and family. The kids enjoyed everything but the mosquitoes and ticks. I think the wet weather has made it a bad year for bugs. We have more mosquitoes than I’ve ever seen in the 21 years we’ve lived here.

Monday, after the family left, Tom and I went to check on a rental that had just come up empty. They left it pretty clean… except for the fleas we didn’t know about. So we ended up tracking fleas home with us. Fortunately (for me) they were more attracted to Tom. But he was not thrilled so unfortunately (for the fleas) we bombed the house, Frontlined the cat, and now seem to be flea-free.

We’ve been considering putting in mini-split heat and air in the two bedrooms downstairs. They typically stay pretty temperate until we have masses of people here. Then they tend to get stuffy and warm. Tuesday North Arkansas Electric came out and did an energy audit to see what size unit we’d need. It really isn’t feasible to put ducting into those rooms, so a mini-split is ideal—if a bit pricy.

I spent time trying to finish up other writing projects to be ready to devote time to my new project with Street Authority. I’d read that Bob Bly, a great copywriter, prints off all the promos and newsletters and information about the project, puts it into a notebook, and uses that as his resource. I know I gain more and can make notes easier on print than computer files. So I went to PostNet and printed off over 300 pages of material. Now to read and digest it.

I worked at finishing up some of the websites. This is one that’s mostly done now: http://quantumde.com/. So you can see I had to brush up on my knowledge of Nano-technology.

Saturday was my Stake Auxiliary Training day. The presidencies of the ward Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary all gathered in West Plains for training. I was conducting and in charge of opening exercises. I also had to oversee and organize the training for Relief Society. And we- the auxiliary presidencies- agreed to fix food for a light lunch. Each presidency made food for 30- pulled pork, baked beans, relish tray, and cookies/brownies. I crock potted 13 lbs. of pork butt and made a relish tray of the remaining bell pepper (slices), cucumber (slices) and cherry tomatoes from mine and my neighbor’s garden.

I think the training went well, but I was glad when it was over. Saturday was also Tom’s and my 45^th wedding anniversary. That’s quite an accomplishment. I’m so glad I married a wonderful man!  We will choose another day to celebrate more fully, although we did have a chance to visit on the drive to and from the auxiliary training.

In the afternoon, Tom went to some other meeting and I took the left over tomatoes and onions and peppers and made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce--sans meat—and froze it in meal portions. My garden did not do well this year—although the weeds are now spectacular. With the cooler weather, I don’t know how many more tomatoes we’ll get. That’s about all that’s left in the garden except for a monster sweet potato vine. If it bears, in any resemblance to the length of vine, we’ll have a fortune in sweet potatoes!

Next week we’ll meet Miranda and Dan for a day at Silver Dollar City.