Our corner of Texas isn't known for its spectacular color. (For that, you need to make a visit to Lost Maples State Park, the only place in Texas where maple trees grow natively.) Our cedar elms, pictured here, are about as golden as they get. But on a crisp fall day, it's a delight to stand underneath them and look up at the blue, blue sky, then walk through the crunchy leaves on the ground. The cypress trees along the creek are beginning to turn their autumn russet, and the Virginia creeper is bright red.
More solar oven experiments. This pecan pie tasted every bit as good as it looks, baking here in the solar oven. Today, I'm baking pecan shortbread cookies, again in the solar oven. We're still trying to use up the enormous crop of pecans that we harvested last year (some 200 pounds, before they were shelled). Thankfully, this was an "off" year for the trees: they naturally cycle through heavy production every second year. We let the squirrels, crows, and jays have the few nuts available this year.
We voted this week, in the Burnet County courthouse, on the square. Surprisingly, there was a line, and the woman checking registrations told me that she didn't think there'd be anybody left to vote on Tuesday. But other than that, and a shopping/supper trip to Marble Falls, it was an at-home week. I logged about 6,000 words on Holly Blues, worked with Peggy on a remodel of the Story Circle webpage, did some work on our SCN online classes, and worked in the garden, where we had our first freeze, mid-week. Bill contrived some hoops for my raised beds with flexible black plastic pipes inserted into metal pegs on both sides of the bed. Covered with row cover, the beds looked like this:
The temperature got down to about 30, but everything was snug under wraps. This is the first year I've used this system. It went up and came down easily. I'll use a similar system next summer as protection against the sun and insects. We're still eating green beans and peas, but I'll probably pick the tomatoes and let them ripen in the house.
I'll have a surprise for you mid-week, so look for a posting here on Wednesday morning. (No, it has nothing to do with the election.)
And in the meantime, if you don't read anything else before you vote, please read Tom Friedman's column in the New York Times.
Reading note. We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words--not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.--Anne Lamott