Week 10 - Fall

I kept saving this post title until the week that I thought it was appropriate. Well, if there was a fall week this year, this was it. The weather was really hot through the Indian summer part of the early week and then snapped down to the 50s with some clear skies and heavy dews. Needless to say, this was a weekend of great yardwork that I owe thanks to Chris for helping me with. We dug up an 8' birch tree and transplanted it to the pasture. Chris also burned up a lot of the scrap hedgeapple from behind the house and the concrete pad is much cleaner now. Earlier this week, my wife and I moved a lot of the leaves out of the hard. Unfortunately, this is a failing endeavor as each time we finished, we awoke to a fresh carpet of brown and yellow. She is considerably more adept with the leaf blower than I am, so we ended up in a job pattern where I would rake up piles of leaves and move them to a giant collection in the pasture while she would blow another section into a pile. All in all, the outside looks better than it did last week but, as always, there is still so much to go. The fence is done so the rush is now on to get some sheep out to graze before the grass is completely dead.

The birch tree in its new location.

Betsy is also very excited about this weather.

My Spartans pulled off an OT win this week and while the odds are against them, they can still salvage their season with some limited honor. As Dantonio said, "We're just playing one game at a time." That's really all they can do. Meanwhile, OSU has finally dominated up to the top after a rousing defeat of Penn State.

My hard cider bubbling up beside the newly bottled pear wine.

On Sunday night we bottled the pear wine and then early this week we transferred over the hard cider. I have to say that the cider looks fantastic. It was alive and very bubbly when we made the transfer and foaming in the new glass container. It is probably the first time that I've made the transfer this early and on time, and I can tell that we are definitely doing things right. The pear wine tastes really good, with some bubbles and a bit of sweet to it. Hopefully as it ages it will only get better. Based on the sugar content, I still have some concern of corks blowing out down the road but there is only one way to find out. I'm not sure why I worry so much about the quality of my products... while doing some reading, I dug up this article of a guy who brewed beer with yeast living in his old beard. Gross!

My wife showed me how to slip political brochures into door handles.

Sunday morning we went out on the Pat Tiberi bus. Despite a pretty rainy and cold day with the Hurricane Sandy weather changes afoot, the Tiberi trip was a pretty good time. We met some people with mutual friends and also got to know a lot of close-minded, self-privileged whiners. Those people aside, we really enjoyed talking to Pat and it is really good to know that there is a politician out there still concerned with representing his people. Unfortunately, with all the weather, we didn't get to drop as much literature door-to-door as we had hoped, but I did learn quickly from my wife how to get the flyers folded and inserted in stormdoor handles in under 2 seconds. I learned a new skill from her this weekend.

That evening we went down to the wonderful zoo for their last night of Boo at the Zoo. It was cold and rainy as I had already mentioned, but that just kept us closer together as we walked around, ate free candy and looked for animals with a spark of energy. All the bears were asleep, as were the fish in the water. It's very fascinating to me to see outdoor fish so close to the glass and holding their position so steady in the water. Sometimes I wish that I could float so easily in the water and move so gracefully. We also saw the largest elephant in North America, Hank, and his lady friend and the baby elephant. The zoo has been working on their elephant breeding program, so he was just brought in to hopefully bring about another baby elephant. Speaking of babies, there were some baby bats hanging upside down in the Asia display. I'd never seen bats so small.

One of the fish sitting in the water.

Python at the Asia exhibit.

Hank the elephant (right).

Fall brings about such crisp weather which leads into the cold, wet nights. I love coming home and cuddling up on the couch next to my wife. In fact, that's where I'm headed off to right now. Have a good week!