While I have truly enjoyed the awesome fall weather we have had - and the beauty of the colors - reality has set in the past two days - winter is coming. Blick.
But I still see some trees with their leaves and the colors can range from one fall color (orange, yellow, or redish) to up to four different fall colors in one tree. I don't remember seeing trees like this for a long, long time. And the bushes that have those beautiful red, almost magenta leaves are gorgeous!
Yesterday the weather turned on us in Iowa. Cold, gloomy, rainy and windy. I knew this morning I would want to tackle the leaves in the driveway in case snow wasn't too far away - and goodness gracious if we'd get so much snow that I'd have to start the snow blower. I remember Mike tried to be very diligent to keep the leaves off the driveway and sidewalk so they wouldn't be buried by snow and then clog the snow blower. So there I am, bundled up with Mike's bright orange, hooded sweat shirt on under my jacket - with the hood up - raking up wet leaves at 8:15 this morning.
There are advantages and disadvantages to everything, even wet leaves. Advantages, they don't blow all over the place while you are trying to rake them up. And you can pick up a lot more leaves in one handful than you can dry, fly-away leaves. Disadvantages - they are wet. One of Mike's friend's from work stopped by (actually the guy Mike bought the Silverado from) and wondered why I bothered raking the leaves - I told him Mike's philosphy. And believe it or not - while we were talking - it started to spit itty, bitty pieces of snow. Thank goodness that didn't last long.
Dad and I have determined I don't have a manual for the snow blower - but I was finally able to find one online in a .pdf format and saved it to my computer. After church tomorrow I will spend some time reading through the manual to learn all about my snow blower - and then hope I won't have to use it for at least another month :)
I'm starting to think of things I'm thankful for - and I'll be dedicating a blog to that one of these days before Thanksgiving. And I've crossed more things off my Christmas To Do List today :) If I get the address labels printed tomorrow after church then while watching NASCAR I may actually put labels and postage stamps on the envelopes and fold my Christmas letters - got those copied today. I think doing the actual Christmas card and letter stuffing will happen next week.
