Catching up on goings-on

Man, there has been so much happening and I haven't blogged about it at all. Ugh! I feel SO blogstipated! :) (Ha ha, the blogger spellcheck doesn't like that word!) I think that's because there's been so much I've wanted to blog about, so I wanted a big block of time to blog. (Would that be a large "blog" of time? har har)

But alas, that blog - er, block - of time somehow never happened.

So I'm going to do my best to give you the Reader's Digest version of what's been going on. (Incidentally, does anyone read Reader's Digest anywhere other than on the toilet? I ask because I don't think I've ever seen them anywhere else. They're always in the bathroom. Aren't they? I think RD knows this, which is why they put all those medication ads in there - because they know that timing is everything. If you spend enough time on the toilet to have a Reader's Digest collection in there, then maybe you need some of those medications.)

Sorry, tangent there. Anyway....what's been going on? Oh yeah. Here are just some random things that I kept forgetting to tell you that I'm finally remembering to now....

First of all, I must share with you one of the highlights of my summer. I was proud to have used an extra, formerly unused portion of my brain to outwit the neighborhood squirrels. That Masters degree finally came in handy. My Classic-era music history professor would be so proud. (Solely of himself and his own ability to spout off unintelligibly in Latin for paragraphs at a time, but that's not the point.)

This consisted of my glue-gunning several metal thumbtacks, business side up, on the roof of the old wooden birdhouse left by the previous owners of our house.

There hasn't been a single squirrel on it since! I sure told them where to take their nuts, didn't I? Didn't I? {**evil cackle**} The birdies are extremely happy and now can dine unmolested by flying rodents. The cats, indirectly, are also thrilled. They have a great view of the many birdies (Kitty HBO) through the big sliding glass doors that lead out to the deck.

We also had some gorgeous flowers come right out of our humble (and very low maintenance) garden. This was probably the most incredibly HUGE rose I think I've ever seen, and it came straight from the rosebush on our front walk which we inherited from the previous owners. I swear to whichever deity you want me to that we do nothing to maintain these roses. We try to remember to water them occasionally but that's it - we didn't even cut them back and winterize them last year (although we had a very mild winter last year so that could be why they didn't die). You can also see Black-Eyed Susans which Mimi (David's mom) gave to us from her garden. They transplanted extremely well and thrived. They were still flowering in late October!

Here's our fall table as its set now. Don't you love that little teapot light? That was a housewarming gift from my mom to us that she brought up in October when she came up to see my concerto solo. Isn't it adorable? Oh, those miniature roses are from our front walk too. They just grow like weeds, again without any maintenance from us! We love our rosebushes so much and find them so easy that we just bought and planted 3 more - two yellow peach-trimmed sweetheart rosebushes, and one fiesta jubilee pink. If they survive the winter, we will have 8 rosebushes in our garden next year! I have always heard awful stories about how much work roses are. We don't do anything to them except water them, and only when it's really hot and dry.

David bought pumpkins, but we never got around to carving them. It looks festive anyway, doesn't it? David likes to use them for pies and muffins and cooking. I was skeptical at first because most of the pumpkin baking I had done used canned pumpkin, but the real stuff is really good too.

And if you look really closely, one of the little orange candles is a cute little candy-corn candle (candle corn?) that my sis-in-law, Pamela, gave us for Halloween. We love it and think it's so festive!

Here's a cute picture of my mom and me when she came up in October...she bought the flowers for me as a soloist gift, and arranged them herself! Beautifully, don't you think?

There's definitely more to tell, but I'll divide the topics into separate posts so as not to be too unwieldy in my entries! Hope you are all having a lovely autumn-into-winter, and that you and yours are happy, healthy, and well. XO