There is no denying autumn this week. The big leaf maples are turning golden and the vine maples red. Spiders are everywhere, gathering and preserving food. The lady beetles and box elder beetles are laying out their pheromones in the warm south facing windows so they can find the their way back from across the valley when it gets cold. Time to call the exterminator to keep them from returning to over winter in the house. I started cleaning out the garden. We are all scurrying about to get ready to hunker down inside.
My childhood friend and neighbor came across the Cascade divide for a visit. We walked in the woods where we played and rode our horses, followed the school bus route around the hill, and discovered the embankment the bus slid down in 1963 wasn’t quite as precipitous as it was in our memories. We visited my neighbor Robert and got a tour of the house where we both lived. Barbara’s family bought the house from my family, and Robert’s family bought it from hers. We reconnected a few years ago around the common experience of parent care. Her mother died 18 months ago, two hours before mine.
We still like each other! (We forgot to take a photo together 🙄)
Then the Littles and moms came to visit for 24 hours!
After they drove off, with Adrian at the wheel, I made the first pass at cleaning out the garden. I pulled out the tomato, squash, and pumpkin vines the deer had feasted on, and pulled a s***load of buttercup. It will be right back in the spring—I’m pretty sure pulling it only encourages it to proliferate—but maybe the winter garden will look a bit neater. The job isn’t done, but I’d had enough for today.
This weekend I’m attending the official grand opening of the Michigan Folk School at the Staebler Farm County Park, on the site of the farm my father’s family owned for 100 years. I’m sure it will be bittersweet. Watch for that story coming up. And then I’m traveling on to eastern North Carolina to visit the Bigs: my two older grandsons and their parentals, whom I don’t see nearly often enough.
My heart and my life are full. Happy autumn!
Writing Down the Story 
That littlest little is changing so much. Both of those boys hold so much in their expressive faces. I think I’m ready for fall this year like never before. Bring on the spiders and lady bugs and burrowing beneath the decay. So much is happening in that quiet.
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