The City Mouse in the Country

Suddenly, it's October. Actually, scratch that.  Suddenly it's mid October.  Frankly time has passed me by quickly this month.  Nor do I have much to share.  We are still in a holding pattern over our home improvements, and I have just learned that our builder has come down with COVID.   So our plans are put off a bit longer.  I would rather have this work done sooner than later because October is a bipolar month.  It's full of sunshine and warm days only to shift to cold nights and rainy weather, here in Stonoboro there is even the possibility of snow flurries in the coming days.  It is not something I'm looking forward to.  For now however I'm finding joy in leaf peeping.  I'm enjoying stepping out on my porch during a break and letting the sun warm my face.  I'm enjoying the taste of homemade eggnog and the fact that my yard has taken on the appearance of a rich Persian rug.     Susan is baking fresh bread and an apple pie.  I relax with a hot cider.

      September got away from me it seemed,     A lot of personal things happened in the last month which made me question a few things, including if it was worth continuing this blog; considering how my readership is so small.   In the end however I decided it was.  Rome, as the saying goes, was not built in a day.     I can already feel the winds of the coming winter starting, our garage is all ready full of three tons of wood pellets for our stove and yesterday was the first day we lit it.   It was not a bad or particularly cold day but we had a chill in the house that caused my hands to be ice cold, and lighting the stove helped chase that chill from them.            Soon it will be time to work on winterizing the home.  First however, we had one last trip that Sue and I had wanted to make; or more of a pilgrimage of sorts.  We were going to visit the National Par k that memorializes the brave souls of Flight 93 which lost their lives one fateful September day in 2001.     This wou

      The Original Look      When we bought this house, a little over two months ago, we understood that the roof was over 30 years old and would need to be replaced.   We actually had moss growing in one part of it, but there seamed to be little damage elsewhere and there was no leakage or damage to the wood underneath as far as we could tell.        There was also a design flaw in the original plans (???), the front porch roof only extended roughly three quarters over the concrete porch.   Since the front end of the porch roof was pitched that meant that any water or snow that missed the gutters was dumped into the final third of the porch.   This is where a diagram would come in handy but sadly, I've not idea on how to draw or attach it to this blog.   Sorry but my sad sack explanation is going to have to do.       Well I understand the basics of roofing, I'm in no way qualified to replace it.      So we hired a contractor and his largely Amish crew to help out, cleaning the

        I have to be honest, I wasn't sure if or when I would get back to this blog.   It is easy to make excuses but honestly, I've not done much of anything to improve the "homestead" in over a week or two; and that honestly bothers me. An old Caboose in Stoneboro     I do tend to be a lazy man and I just feel that I should be doing more to help prepare this home for the coming winter, but so far the temperatures have not dropped below the mid 40's and the last  two days have been a pretty consistent rain, which makes doing anything outside unpleasant at best and down right near impossible at worst.      What this has allowed the lovely Sue and I to do however is spend a little time traveling, exploring and finally getting our new pellet stove installed.  Well Sue grew up in this particular part of Western Pennsylvania, I did not.  We decided to go sight seeing, take in the wonders of Autumn and just relax for a bit.       Now generally speaking I would get all