Well…. we’ve had a lovely, lingering, late autumn here.  Yesterday Eli, his Cross Country Coach, and a few teammates ran in the Rockland (Maine) 5K “Scare Me” run.  Eli’s “costume” was to wear the rugby shirt he bought in Australia this summer… it was nippy, about 39 degrees, but no wind down on the water.

At the start of the Rockland 5K race...Eli is in the middle of the photo in a light blue shirt with dark under-armor shirt sleeves showing--to the left of the guy in the red shirt who won, the woman in the white shirt who was fastest female, and behind middle-school teammate J.R. ( in jade, magenta, lime and blue--like her colors!)

Rockland Harbor from the Amalfi restaurant parking lot/boardwalk area. Had never been down this way before...beautiful! Looks like a nice spot for a special summer evening out.

Then my camera batteries died.  Eli–WOW!–came in sixth overall, fastest kid, and turned in a 19:40.  Whoooosh…that blur was our son running past!  The top finishers were a tank of a guy who runs an outdoor expedition company, Coach Morse (who ran a marathon last year), a woman who works for the tank, and a guy Coach Morse has been trying to beat for years (and finally did, by mere seconds).  Not bad for a 13 year old!

Then last night, when I took the dog out for before-bed walkies, snow!  He took his first bites of snow, and we went to bed.  This is what greeted us this morning!   Before Halloween!!!!!!

The beautiful maple...fortunately no broken branches, tho Eli just walked the dog and says we may have lost one of the old apple trees out back. The snow is heavy and wet. From the top of the car looks like about 6-7 inches, and still coming down.

And yes, neighbor Alex had already been up the driveway with the plow…. egads!

We've been talking about moving the porch furniture into the shed for winter. Clearly, we forgot. Didn't know that an open-weave hammock (far end) could become a snow-laden sheet!

The pine by the front/kitchen porch

And the view from the living room porch, toward the view. Over the year about half of the really old, rickety log fence (in the middle of the yard...why?) has fallen down. I'm guessing by next year it will be mostly a memory.

So it’s a perfect day to hole up in the studio. Paul fired up the woodstove (in the basement–whole house heat) for the first time, so I will be WARM.  Have to make postcards for a swap and select quilts to take for teaching in NH next week/weekend.  If any of you are in NH at A Quilters’ Gathering, come by and say hi!  And I’m giving a lecture on Sunday!

As usual, crazy busy, but looking for a brief reprieve soon….

On Sunday, there was a Fruit and Fiber day at Hope Orchards, down at Hope Corner (across the street from the General Store).  I decided that I really need to begin exercising…after about 21 months of being a pudge, it is really getting to me, and life has settled down enough that I can re-focus.  So I asked hubby if he would pick me up if I walked the 3 miles to “town” (an intersection in rural Maine qualifies as a town).  The answer was yes, as long as it isn’t when the Patriots play!  So I went before 4!
It was GLORIOUS!

Then Paul came rushing in one morning and said quick, you gotta see this sunrise (at 6:30 a.m.), it may be picture worthy.  It was!

Hubby on the porch off the living room, but the camera metered on the sky...erk

Then I figured out how to get the camera to take a picture the way I was seeing the sky…WOW!

OH MY! Worth getting up to see this!

All this week I have been on a rip and a tear to clear the last things out of the storage unit that held mom’s stuff.  When she moved here in 2008, I rented the unit for things that wouldn’t fit in her small 2-room place at Quarry Hill (assisted living).  Since she was still kinda with it, I didn’t feel like I could sell it off or get rid of it, because I wanted to have it to give her if she asked for something (painting, memento, etc).  Last summer when she moved to one room in the memory loss unit, had to rent a second (kaChing) unit.  Emptied the second one about a month ago.  This one, before I started liquidating things about a year ago, was full, front to back, floor to near ceiling.  This week it had two large pieces of furniture and 31 BOXES of books I had to sort through.  After selling some to an antique dealer (as reference books), sending some off with a used book store guy, more donated to the Camden Public Library, and yet more to Goodwill, this is how the unit looked at 3 p.m. yesterday:

Hallelujah! The great emptying is DONE!

When Paul’s dad died, there was an “estate sale lady” that basically took care of selling everything off from the house, took a percentage, donated the rest, and we cleaned out the house.  Nothing like that here so it was dribs and drabs to liquidate things.  I have promised my kids I will do my best not to depart this earth and leave them with so much STUFF!

This morning, the drippies have arrived:

Even in heavy mist (the weather station said it was raining tho it was really just wet air)! it is beautiful here...this was about 7:10 a.m.

And this glorious view off the other side of the kitchen porch/entry:

The back 40 (well, OK, maybe the back 4 acres), and I really need to clean up the flowerbeds for winter!

AND, drum roll, this week we modified the membership at the Y to include me, and today I began!  I will NOT regain that weight!  I will NOT be a pudge!  I WILL get healthy!  Now…off to play as a reward to myself…taking Jane LaFazio’s mixed media journal class at joggles.com and can’t wait to get started on this week’s lesson!

After a week with quite nippy temperatures and the first frost, we’ve been given the gift of a glorious Indian summer weekend here in Maine.  Highs in the upper 70s (and even above inland I expect), lows in perfect sleeping weather.

The view from our porch late this afternoon. Some trees are losing leaves, but we still look mostly green... trees are turning, but nowhere near peak yet

Today was a grand day with a Coastal Quilters meeting after dropping our younger son off for his first 5K run.  The run is a fundraiser for the High School (graduating class maybe?), and coincides with Homecoming, and is open to adults, teens and middle school kids.  Eli’s Cross County coach, Jim Morse and one of the coolest teachers EVER on the planet let alone here in Camden, ran, as did Eli, his best friend since first grade B. W., and the top girl on their team J.R., also in 8th grade.  Well… just before the meeting began I got a call from the hubster with the results:  Mr. Morse won by a goodly margin.  Two college kids came in 2nd and 3rd.  Eli and B.W. came in 4th and 5th, respectively, and J.R. was the fastest female and in the top 10!  WOW!

Since Paul and Eli were at the high school watching games, etc., I decided to putter in town and have lunch (a rare treat!) at my favorite eatery, Marriner’s Grill.  I got a small table on the deck overlooking the harbor:

Camden Harbor from my seat on the deck at Marriner's Grill, my favorite diner

While waiting, I continued this wonderful book I’m reading called True to Life:  Twenty five eyars of conversations with David Hockney, by art critic (and really insightful writer) Lawrence Weschler.

A fascinating read, besides which Hockney is pretty cool and interesting

Given that I’ve put on a few pounds this past summer, the choice of BLT (Bacon Lettuce and Tomato for those not in the U.S.) and fries with diet cola was not exactly smart, but it sure tasted good!  Deborah…lookit!  I actually took a picture of my food before I snarfed it down!

A good meal: diet drink, fattening and tasty food, and a good book!

After that I went home, walked the doggie for 2 miles, then sat to start this week’s lesson.  An online class at Joggles.com, Sketching and Watercolors in a Mixed Media Journal with Jane LaFazio   began this week.  I know I’ve been promising what I did in the last class with her, and I will post, but decided I’d actually try posting what I’m doing NOW (and not months ago) when I can.  The hope is that I will make this journaling thing a habit AND improve my drawing skills.  The first lesson was to sketch an everyday object,  using a Tombow pen (a water-soluble ink… draw in pen, then use a wet brush to spread the ink to create light and shadow).  I decided that my laptop is definitely an everyday object, and since it is a Mac and Steve Jobs died this week and I love the quote I used, I’d sketch that:

R.I.P. Mr. Jobs. Thank you for changing our world.

Well…. I discovered that it is challenging to deal with a LOT of flat surfaces, omitting excess detail, and still find some shading.  Especially when the laptop and screen are mostly shades of gray, making the diffused shadows even more difficult.  I’ll try another, more textured something later, but for now…first the outlined-in-permanent pen version:

Used pencil to get the proportions and lines mostly right, then inked with a Pitt permanent pen, then erased the pencil

Next I added the gray (dark) Tombow and washed with water ….   I am not certain that we were supposed to use the permanent pen for this lesson, but I wanted to include some text and for the outlines to not blur, so I decided I would anyway.

The page with a quote from Steve Jobs, showing the Apple home page

And the sketch and laptop:

I simplified some, omitting some desktop icons and extra open windows.

All in all a wonderful day.  And since it is almost suppertime, I guess I’d better get off the computer (thank you Apple for making a great system!) and go think about dinner.  Maybe.  Pass me a white zin, first, please!

Snapped this with my phone on morning dog-walkies–our first frost.  It was 35 when we got up this morning…and it is supposed to be colder tonight.  Then (go figger!) up to low 70s over the weekend!

A brief moment of whimsy….  the wild turkeys are plentiful around here, and in August we were treated nearly daily to the extended family outings…we love the family sitting on the nearly-rotten fence that divides the area we mow from the lower meadow:

The turkey clan hanging out on the fence....

and one more–there are 19 of them including 4 adults and 15 “chicks” (currently the size of chickens!):

The turkeys forage in the meadow, then take a break on the fence. We've actually seen them all fly...they are BIG birds!

Gobble gobble!