Fall in All Its Glory

The view out of our loft bedroom windows this morning.

We had a surprise day off today because we managed to finish an expected two-day landscape job in one long day for a super nice couple who have a beautiful yard out in Cleveland, Tenn. Despite our aching muscles and fierce leg cramps, we celebrated with our usual morning walk with Nick the Dog through the falling leaves of the season. The shot above was the view this morning out of our windows from the loft. (Sorry if the focus is lame; I shot through the filthy window.)

As you might imagine, there's no chance of trick-or-treaters out here tonight, but we do plan to carve a pumpkin. And also toast my mother, who celebrated a landmark birthday today. (Note: Everyone in my family was born on a holiday except for me. Yes, I am bitter.)

And we leave you with the colors of fall from today's walk:

Mostly maples, but also a sourwood, a hickory.

Hello? Beautiful!

A back corner of our property

My boys, up by the "lake."

The Busy Season

Some landscape designing, with the help of Mom's gifts of colored pencils and fancy pens.

Fall's the best time to plant here in Tennessee, and that means I've been blazin' busy. For the past month, I've added an extra day every week at the nursery job. Lots of folks have been coming in wanting major landscape designs, and of course then they want someone to come plant it for them. So Mason and I have picked up a little side work. (Lucky Mason: "These are supposed to be my golden years," he keeps saying. "You're killing me!") Then there's all the planting to be done around OUR house. ...

This was taken a week ago. It looks better now. And yes, the leaf  raking has begun.

So we got the last little patch of lawn seeded, and most of it is coming in great. And I'm dragging home plants from work (to Mason's dismay) to keep filling in the acre of dirt sourrounding our Home Sweet Hovel. Most of the plants have been perennials that are looking a bit haggard from a summer of sitting in little pots. I really need to invest in some major shrubs ... but all in due time.

What's Mason been up to, you ask? Fixing cars, generators and refrigerators. And brewing beer. And building out-of-control bonfires. And digging holes for me, poor man.

So I leave you with a gorgeous aster blooming at the corner of our well house. It was yet another gift from Craig, whose own garden is to die for.

My lovely aster.  Love the purple against the brown fence.

Home Sweet Hovel

The new lawn will start in the upper right corner of this photo.

After a three-week break from Flat Top, it sure is good to be home again. And I'm pretty sure not 24 hours had gone by before I launched into my fall lawn-seeding project. This will be the last patch of lawn we'll be putting in. (I kinda doubt that, sez Mason.) It will circle the so-called "tiki bar" area (which has no tiki theme, nor a bar yet, so we might should consider a new name). 

The new patch of lawn will lead out past the well house to the forthcoming veggie garden area, which is slated for spring 2014, but we'll need to build a deer fence around it, so it may not happen until the following year. It also will lead out to the guest cabin that I SWEAR is still on the project list.

As for fall, only the sumacs have turned red so far, but it's definitely in the air. The days are still warm, but the nights are cooling off. Last night we had a lovely bonfire, compliments of Mason and the massive pine tree he took down this summer.

That's the fire raging in the background, with Mason tending it.
In the foreground is a cool yellow sunflower given to me by my cool co-worker Craig.

Mesmerizing, isn't it? For scale, that firepit is about 8 feet wide.

As for those weeks away from Flat Top, they were a blast. Texas was all about eating all of Mason's favorite foods -- and a few of mine -- and seeing family. Then we trekked to Minnesota for the first time in three years and were feted with a fabulous bonfire party by former coworkers, helped spring a surprise 50th birthday party for a close friend and played tennis for the first time in eight years (a note to fellow players: the butt bruise is still six inches around and a lovely, through now fading, magenta.)

Me, Courtnay and gracious hostess Catherine
around the bonfire, sometime well after midnight.

Courtnay, Michiela and me, after much-needed girl time at the mall.
(And yes, I need to teach Mason how to focus the damn camera.)


Your friends from Flat Top.

We miss all those close friends and thank them all for their wonderful hospitality, and are amazed how many have already made the trip here to Flat Top, our home sweet home, aka our hovel sweet hovel ...

It's Summer Again

My Encore Azaleas make an encore performance (Notice Nick in background.
Also, my itty bitty plastic greenhouse way back there.)

Not much news, other than it hasn't rained in a whole week. Of course, now it's 90-plus degrees and sticky sweaty. Pick your poison, huh?

Tonight's sunset washed an incredible glow of gold over our yard. That happens here a lot. I've tried to capture it in photos, but the pics never reflect the magic of it. I need my photo queen Leslie to shoot it.

So, for lack of news, here are a few photos for you.

Beautiful despite its unfortunate name of "Toad Lily."

Love the color in the new growth on this "Dream Catcher" beautybush.

Mason and Nick, Sitting in a Tree ...

A kiss on command. 

Seriously, folks, I'm starting to get a bit concerned about all of the time Mason and Nick are spending together alone while I'm at work. Nick gives Mason a "kiss" on command these days. A serious daddy's boy. But kinda cute, huh?

August has brought even more $%#!#$! rain, and some record-low highs. As I type this, I'm wearing my winter slippers. This isn't right.

But today's cool afternoon was perfect for transplanting a small tree that needed more sun, and roto-tillering the final patches of dirt that I plan to seed with grass in a few weeks. Sound like a productive day? It gets better: It started with a home-cooked French-toast breakfast, followed by climbing back into bed to finally finish Robert Caro's fourth book in his LBJ biography, followed by an hour-long nap.

Yes, the mountain life is good to me. As for Mason, he's been busy cutting up and splitting a 90-foot pine tree we felled recently. We accidentally took out another tree in the process, but it's OK. At least it wasn't the house, and, by taking out that pine, we gained at least another hour or more of evening sunshine on the solar panel.

(Side note on Southerners: I've learned from talking to customers about the sunlight in their yards: When they say "in the evening," they mean anytime after 1 p.m.)

So, for the record, we reward our hard work here on Flat Top with an icy cold beer  -- but only in the evenings!!

Save the bees!

A fabulous rudbeckia that fabulous co-worker Craig gave me! 

FYI, when Craig came to visit Flat Top, he pointed out I had wild blueberry bushes. Huh. I had never noticed before, probably because when I was on walks, I was too busy scanning the ground for snakes and the air for huge spider webs to notice the blueberries, which were tiny but mighty delicious last month.
 

Southern Living, Sweetie

My favorite morning happy place

Out to dinner in Wisconsin with about 10 close friends, one of the men in our group chatting with our waitress called her "hon" (as in honey) and let me tell you, the head of every woman in our group did a quick, in-unison turn in his direction as our jaws dropped.

Now this was years before I even considered living in the South. But this friend, Mike, is a salesman and at the time, he traveled extensively in the South and spent the rest of that night defending his "hon" remark to five women who had some seriously ruffled feathers.

Fast forward five years, and now I'm a shopgirl in Chattanooga. In the past four months, I've been called "sugar," "sweetie" and countless times "honey." The first time it was a young woman, bottle-blond with bubble-gum pink toenails, who called me "sugar," and all I could do was squint my eyes, cock my head and recall that night in Wisconsin. 

But now when a customer drops that Southernism on me, I flash a quick smile, slip into a Southern twang and move on with selling them that starter fertilizer or some other upgrade. Now, don't get me wrong: I can't imagine I'd ever use the lingo myself. And I think what works in the South doesn't necessarily work in Wisconsin. And maybe it doesn't "work" in the South, but believe me, it's here to stay.

SO, back at the homestead. ... The endless rain has finally ended and the power of the sun continues to amaze us, now in our third month of relying only on our solar panel for our blender drinks, evening TV and lights. The native black-eyed Susans are in full bloom, as are the coneflowers, and the grass lawns remain fairly lush. I've been well-behaved, saving my money rather than bringing home new plants; we'll see how long that lasts.

And life -- the good life -- goes on.

9-Plus Inches of No Outside Time

In the past eight days, we've endured more than 9 inches of rain. Our doors are swollen. Our cabinet drawers are swollen. Our skin is sallow. A waft of mold creeps through the cabin. The giant fire pit in the front yard is full of water. We've been stuck inside. Arrgh!!!

I took a photo of the worst part of our road, which in good times is a series of loose, rocky shelves of sandstone, but in rainy times is a small waterfall.  Mason managed to kill the photo off his 1990s-not-so-smart phone in our attempt to download it. Trust me, it was a sight.

OH, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow. And the next day, too. The first day that I see half of a sun in the forecast is Saturday. Sweet Mohammed, help us!

In related news, we've managed to limp along this past week with just our solo solar panel charging the batteries (OK, OK we watched TV in the dark on Friday night, but we made it). We got just enough sunshine the past two days to bring the batteries back up enough that we may just make it to Saturday's half-sun and not have to generate any power for our evening lights and TV. Kinda cool, huh? Free electricity!

In unrelated news, I made homemade ranch salad dressing tonight and my world has been turned upside-down.

In more unrelated news, Nick turned 9 years old last week. I took a photo, but he didn't smile.

In further unrelated news, I'm greatly disturbed by the growing number of car commercials using hit songs from my college years.

And on a final note, I love these red gladiolas:

And in one final unrelated note: Mason says, "Why am I still cutting and splitting firewood for next winter? I'm retired. dammit! These are my Golden Years. (Golden Days?) Whatever.
Oh well. We got solar, a full propane tank and about nine cords of firewood. Bring on the apocalypse!
Cheers, y'all.