autumn

autumn
spearfish creek - south dakota

08 November 2008

help for the older persons





some days are down days for me so thursday when we had a snow day i sort of collapsed into nothingness. my sis had a great burst of energy: worked on sewing project, painted a picture, and i don't know what else--she was busy. friday was another snow day. some people were returning to work, but there was no school. sis had a party planned for some of our after school kids, but that was canceled. she went out to tackle shoveling the driveway. i was inside cleaning out the fridge. i asked if she could take out the garbage sacks when they were full since she had volunteered to do it the day before. well, it was a bit much to ask just after she had worked on the driveway. she was really mad at me. BuT, we were saved by the arrival of her grand-kids and her son. he took one look at the driveway and the ice on the sidewalk and went home to get his little front loader that he, his brother, and their dad had bought. there was probably a 4 foot drift all across our driveway and the snow was really wet. in fact, if you look at the snow picture you can see a blue air pocket. my nephew said it is because the wet air is so cold that it turns blue. not quite sure how that works. after the driveway was cleared, he and his dad finished our little water diversion project so that the water from the roof does not drain onto the sidewalk. the ice that formed every snow storm was pretty dangerous. formerly the water that was coming down the gutter was too much to go unde the sidewalk as planned and it would spout up at the connection at the sidewalk and spill out and then freeze. we have a couple of cracks in the sidewalk that have to be mended. so we rerouted the gutter over the sidewalk. next spring we will plant a vine to grow up over the gutter. it should make a pretty entrance to our little house.

07 November 2008

mini vs 4x4 truck

okay....here is the controversy. i say my mini is safer on snowy and snow packed streets than my sis's truck.

06 November 2008

first blizzard of 08-09 winter






snow day! yeah!
it is all sort of fun until you have to go out and shovel off the deck and driveway. i went out and fixed the bird feeder so the birds could eat. my sis tossed some seed on the concrete below the deck. why it doesn't have snow i don't know. from the picture you can see a huge drift of snow right at the edge of the concrete. dennis the cat wanted to go out until he realized what was out there. so he sits by the sliding doors downstairs and watches the juncos through the glass.

theme dinner - halloween







well, my sis and i did it again. another theme dinner. it is a lot of work, but it entertains us old folks. one of her sons does not do anything for halloween, but the other one who lives in town takes his children out trick-or-treating. so we had a halloween themed dinner for the kids. we bought a hairy spider to hang from the light and made ghoulish food--bleary-eyed potatoes(potatoes with olive eyes and guacamole sauce and taco sauce, gruel (thick broccoli soup with half a boiled egg as an eye; it also had an olive pupil), mummy meatloaf (meatloaf with two slices of round motza cheese eyes with olive pupils and then wrapped in noodles), and carrot cake with a spider web on top.

sis bought lots of candy for trick-or-treaters. we lighted the tiki torches and put little battery tea lights inside paper sacks. but not many came. we should have read the paper first as they reported that nationwide, trick-or-treating is way down.

i had to take a picture of our very own halloween cat. he sleeps a lot and is not at all scary. he is the nicest of our 3 cats.