falling into fall

I love the arrival of fall, probably as much as I enjoy the arrival of spring. Each brings out the best of a variety of things, and I find myself looking forward to the arrival of each season more each year. It's not that I don't enjoy winter and summer, because I do, but spring and fall are much more appreciated around here for some reason.

With the arrival of fall, I get:

• waking up in a cold bedroom, and grabbing a pair of socks immediately
• watching my burning bushes in the backyard turn a glorious shade of red
• cooking with pumpkin - bars, muffins, bread, cake - all of it yum!
• the leaves are starting to turn from green to golds, reds, oranges and browns
• crunch crunch crunch as we walk to and from school
• heavy foods - stews, soups, casseroles - everything that was too much for summer
• jeans and sweaters
• apples and cranberries, together and apart, ready to be turned into applesauce, cranberry sauce, apple pie filling, butter and jam
  

I've already hit the pumpkin hard this week - three batches of pumpkin muffins, in addition to the two loaves of banana bread.

Even though we're having a bit of a last hurrah for summer - it's been in the upper 70's all week - the mornings have been glorious, perfect for a cup of hot coffee and a bit of a book before the day gets rolling.

Even though I know that fall comes to an end, and my least favorite weather follows, I'm glad that fall is here.

score!

I may have scored at a garage sale this morning.

My Mother In Law is in search of a daybed for the spare bedroom for The Girls. I happened to see one at a garage sale in my subdivision this morning, so I stopped.

Well, she didn't get the bed, but I saw three large tubs of canning jars under a table in the garage. Woo Hoo!

I ended up bringing home one dozen large mouth quart jars, a half gallon wide mouth jar, and two dozen smooth sided pint jars. I also brought home ten of the slip top jars for storage. These may be fairly old, of the 'vintage' era, whatever that may be. I just think they're cool - if a jar can be pretty, these are them.

I also cleared out her stash of cloth napkins and three table cloths that match. I don't think I'll ever use the tablecloths (they're plaid, and my eating area curtains have vertical stripes), but the twenty four cloth napkins will come in very handy around here.

clean up

So yes, it stopped raining.

I read in the newspaper that the Chicago area got 20% of it's annual rainfall in a 30 hour period last weekend. No wonder we're all under water.

The carpet is out, and the floor doesn't look too bad. The basement smells weird, though.

Also, I'm glad I cleaned out earlier this year, or my job would have been much worse.

Heading into a sunny weekend, for The Husband's Twenty Year High School Reunion. He's old.

rain

It feels like it's been raining forever. I think we got something like six inches of rain yesterday, which is being followed up by more rain today. It's supposed to dry out this week, which is a good thing.

Our basement had a water problem yesterday, which gives me this week to tear out the basement carpet and clean a cement floor. I also get to buy an area rug. Because my list of "home improvements" wasn't long enough, ya know. That, and I have an endless supply of money to do all these things with.

I'm also tempted to toss my kids out into the rain and let it wash the snark out of them. They are having a serious case of the aggravate-each-others.

I am just a bunch of good cheer today, aren't I? Blech. I am never moving to the Pacific Northwest - I'll go back on a vacation, but I'm never living there.

And yes, while I'm sure that if someone happens to stumble across me, they'll think me an insensitive little snot, complaining about my bit of rain, when there are people in Galveston and Houston, and all parts in between, having lost everything in feet of water, that definitely won't clean up anytime soon or as easily as a ripped out carpet. I get it. I know. I'm aware. I know it could be worse, and that in the whole scheme of things, my problems are miniscule, but this is my pity party, and I'm the hostess, so I'll let it be for now. My pity parties tend to be short lived anyway.

side note

I think that the Food Saver may be one of the best inventions ever.

harvesting

Yesterday, I got a phone call from my mother in law, letting me know that the corn was ready to be picked. This was somewhat funny, considering that earlier in the summer, I had asked about corn, and was told that they were not going to be planting any. So, I had resigned myself to getting corn from the farmers market, and the possibility of not having any to freeze. Hmm ... bad assumption.

Here's a timeline:

3:30 phone call from MIL - they have 24 rows of sweet corn, want some?
3:40 leave the house with two complaining children
4:00 arrive at farm where MIL works and start picking
4:45 leave farm where MIL works with 157 ears of corn!
8:30 look at corn and say to DH - what was I thinking?
10:30 tell DH that we're done for the night, we ran out of freezer bags for corn cut off the cob

9:00 am start shucking corn, again, another 60 ears to be frozen on the cob
10:20 take a break while waiting for water to boil and blog about overwhelming amounts of corn

So ... my freezer is slowly being taken over by corn.

In addition to the 25 pounds of blueberries I've already frozen.
In addition to the tomatoes from our garden that I've been freezing
Not including two gallons of blackberries waiting to be made into jam.

And I was going to make a batch of sloppy spaghetti this afternoon, so that is another six quarts of sauce I'll have to freeze.

I think I may have a problem. In more ways than one.