On Saturday morning, I was up at 5:30AM and got the post up. I got the kitchen cleaned up and then got a chicken in the crockpot. I sat down for a while. Around 11AM I got ready and went out to mow up leaves.
Fairy in the clean room drying out
I got the mower started, backed up 10’ and the accelerator broke. The mower would run but wasn’t going anywhere. So I shut it off and went back to the house and called the mower guy. He said it sounded like the belt had slipped off. He’d come get it on Monday.
Before I’d gone out, my friend had called and wanted to know if I wanted to go see the Halloween display at a local park. I said sure, but after 2PM when I finished mowing. So when I got back to the house, I called her and left a message that the mower died and once I’d had a shower, I’d be free to go.
She called back about 12:30PM and said she was heading over. I went outside to wait for her and got these shots from the front steps.
Then I remembered the fairy was still out there and the frosts were coming. So I brought her inside to the clean room to dry out before she goes to the living room for the winter.
While I was waiting for my friend, I noticed something odd about the goldy mums. The big one from last year to the east of the steps had grown out rust colored. IOt had been goldy last year. But the part of it against the steps was more goldy colored.
The little one I thought had died to the west of the steps, was doing well and was a nice goldy color, though darker than the 2 goldy mums I bought this year. Those 2 planted this year in the thyme in the walkway are doing well and have remained the goldy color.
My friend picked me up and we headed for the park. But on the way, we saw a garage sale sign so we followed it and found the sale. These are the things I got. The bulb planter was brand new, still had the tag. Those got for about $16. Then I found the little plant table for $2. All together I spent $7.
So we again headed for the park and got out to walk through the displays. There were about a dozen different ones with the skeletons. These were my favorites. The light and the colors everywhere were just gorgeous. I’ve not seen such an autumn day in years. We got back in the car and drove around the park then headed out to do some errands.
When my friend had picked me up, she had handed me the big barrel of Christmas balls. She’d found it at a tag sale the weekend before. I’ll keep the ones I like and offer the rest on BuyNothing.
One of the errands was to drop off recycling at her town’s transfer station. Her town has a free area. (Mine does not.) So I went to check it out while she did the recycling. The first thing I saw was the Boston fern. Someone had dropped it off and if it was left there, it would have died in the cold in the night. So I grabbed it and put it in the trunk of the car. I already had a new plant table for it!
Then I checked out the rest of the free stuff and found this framed botanical drawing. It was pretty dirty but it cleaned up real well.
When we left, we’d decided to see if we could find any more tag sales. It was the big Columbus Day weekend, the end of the season hurrah. So we headed north and as we drove she was telling me about all the tag sales she went to the weekend before with her goddaughter. The town we were driving though had a town wide tag sale, so naturally there were none this weekend. Sigh…
We drove all the main drags of the town north of that and didn’t find a single sign! So we took the back roads home and it was so pretty, the late afternoon light through the colored trees, the deep blue sky, just so lovely. But we saw no more tag sale signs.
She didn’t want to go home yet. So we stopped in a little farm store and picked up a few things, then went to my house to drop off mine and then hers to do same. We’d decided to go out for supper as she was craving green curry and I’d never had it. So we went to a Thai restaurant and she got her curry. I got a much milder one and we had a good meal.
When we were driving to my house, we started seeing tag sale signs and even a bright pink estate sale sign! But we hadn’t gone that way before and now it was too late. Sigh…
When I got home my brother hadn’t come home either and so I had to deal with the chicken in the crockpot. I stripped the carcass and got a nice big bowl of meat. We’d make something of it later.
On Sunday it’s going to rain all day and I plan to start washing the storm windows. There are lots to do before Tuesday’s window washing starts.