For the birds

need to put this huge poster up in our orange and blue living room

travel photos in our bedroom. My favorite is the top one with tiny Steve next to the massive door of Santa Salute in Venice

This is 5 feet long. I had seen it at a resale shop last week but didn't get it as the colors would not match
anything but I went back this week to get it thinking I could put it my office which is painted gray. Steve thinks
 it is too big for the room

It is now the November that I hate: cold, gray and rainy. Before visiting a good friend last
 night, I stopped at a megastore near her that has a huge bird supply department buying seed
cakes that specifically attract woodpeckers. So for, the only woodpecker it attracted was my
 white breasted nuthatch but I am hoping when it is cold, the woodpecker from the woods
south of us will pay us a visit; namely the red headed woodpecker and the red breasted
woodpecker. I know the latter was here in the spring as it has a very distinctive cry but
even though it must have been nearby, I couldn't see it. I have seen downies here and
maybe a hairy woodpecker. The finches are still here but without their breeding colors,
 they look drab. and today I thought I saw snow buntings unless they are particularly
light gold finches. And a gray hawk came to visit our yard again. Not sure what type
 as the most common types around here are the red tailed and red shouldered which are
mainly tan . I would think my birds are too small for it but maybe it was after the squirrels
 and chipmunks.

 

My friend's chickens will only dare to cross her open yard when it is sunny so they can see
 the hawk shadows.

 

I feel I am in a holding pattern until we close on that house worried what could derail it. We
 had to transfer the utilities into their names today and we could see their insurance agent had
 been around. Hopefully he didn't uncover issues.

 

And as Don'tae has to leave town for a funeral during the time he usually has Maya and
 Naomi will be working, we will have Maya for a few days. One evening will be spent
 with Shanna's kids as they haven't seen each other for 3 months. Tessa and Shanna did
stop by today for lunch. Tessa spent time jumping on the mini trampoline.

Which goes in first?

My niece's photo of the lion at the NYC public library

triple barn. According to a huge sign, this farm is environmentally friendly

Allie stopped by for lunch this morning. In the  background is a mini-trampoline I bought the other day to burn off grandkid energy

button flag Haven't figured where I am going to put it up

 

Steve walked through the laundry room just as I was beginning to do a load yesterday. He was aghast.

 

Just what are you trying to do?

Um...the laundry?

 

Turns out, according to him, I was doing it all wrong. I had dumped all the clothes into the machine and then planned to add the water and the soap. He said the only way to do it was to fill the machine with water, then add the soap to make sure it was dissolved (liquid..it pretty much instantly dissolves) and only then add the clothes. I then walked out leaving it to him thinking, again, how rigid and weird he can be sometimes. We do have a crude division of labor here. Laundry mostly is his job but some how, in all of years of marriage, we never observed the other doing it. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I did look this up and there was a certain logic to doing it his way especially when the detergents were slow to dissolve. Obviously front end loaders would be done my way.

 

It was too cold for me to bike this morning. Josh and Allie paid a visit. In those few hours, the temps climbed 20 degrees. Still chilly but very little wind. As it was too late for the paved roads to be traffic free, I stuck to dirt roads going on some that were new to me. Still it took a while in the warm shower for me to warm up again.

Foster succulents

A local artist, David Zinn, creates these chalk masterpieces about town. Very cool

My succulents and my friend's wintering about my tub

Is it too early for X-mas lights?

Iris tile purchased yesterday, also next to my tub

cool cat print

My friend who is recovering from a stem cell transplant can't have houseplants until her immune system is fully functional so I have some of her plants until spring. Even Ann Arbor will be hit with a frost tonight. When I went to pick up her plants, I noticed all her flowers were in bloom, the same flowers that are dead here as it is about five degrees colder.

 

All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray....

 

Drab November is here. One patch of color I am noticing that I haven't in previous years is the bright yellow wild asparagus all around. And on our last bike ride, we went by an entire field of bright yellow cultivated asparagus. Should have stopped to take a photo. The leaves are mostly down on my runs through the woods. I stopped under a huge, dead tree to see what was tapping. A red headed woodpecker! A first sighting for Sue. There was also a hairy woodpecker there. Then I saw a flock of yellow birds on the other side of the road. Not even goldfinches are yellow this time of year (they still come to my thistle feeder but they are grayish now). Warblers? Don't fly in flocks. Then the bizarre whistling noises sounded familiar: cedar wax wings!! We had a flock of them for a month in our service berry tree but right now, we have no fruit to attract them. They are so pretty.

 

Yesterday I amused myself seeing what were in the thrift shops to my east. I did get some nice stuff which I will post more of later. Then a friend stopped by for wine and trash TV. It was fun. Does all my biking and running negate the effects of drinking an entire bottle of wine? Probably not.

 

 

Indian summer ends

The first two photos are of graffiti my friend took in Detroit

The sky this morning

I watched Tess this morning as she rode the tricycle, the Ziggle, the Little Tykes cars, the balance bike...

Pretty farm on this afternoon's bike ride

So the last 4 days have been beautiful: sunny, temps in the 70s, relatively calm. I've been
trying to enjoy the weather as much as possible with long bike rides and runs. A cold front
 is coming through as I type. Wind, cold, rain....well it was nice as it lasted. We had Maya
on Monday and Tessa this morning. I tried to include as much outside time as possible.

 

Not so enjoyable was attending Maya's Individualized Educational Plan yesterday. A very
crowded room: the teacher, the school's special ed specialist, the speech therapist, the
 occupational therapist, and two different social workers along with me and the parents.
 Lots of conflicting testing results and opinions on what to do with Maya and how to
classify her. I had to fight bursting into tears versus bursting into an angry rant. I am
 sure Dont'ae and Naomi were totally confused. I believe the classroom teacher had
the best handle on the whole situation: that academically, she is average, has trouble
with fine motor skills activities and is too easily distracted which  could be a maturation
 issue or she really does have attention deficit disorder. One of these experts kept going
over the results of a test that Maya clearly didn't understand the point of. She pointed out
 that this indicated that Maya is in the 0.3%tile in intelligence, which means of a 1000 5
year olds, only 3 would perform as poorly.

 

Really, it is a miracle she could even walk and talk as that indicates she is severely
mentally handicapped. So how come she does just as well in her schoolwork as her
 classmates?

 

Another expert, to show Maya is more distracted than others timed her versus another
child matched for gender and race. Maya was focused on an activity for 50% of the
 time versus 78% for the only other African -American in the room. Proof positive
 to her that something is wrong with Maya.

 

And then they wrote that she is Emotionally Impaired. I blew up when I saw that.
 They said that was a mistake, they had no idea how that got typed in. Her sociability
 is one of her strong suits.

 

Anyway, we pointed out she is in this school only one year. We will start over
 with a different group of experts next year though the one social worker is at the
 other school too.

 

She will still get speech therapy although the therapist had a hard time articulating
the exact problem  Maya can make each individual sound and repeat a word
correctly when asked but when she speaks, she slurs many words together and
mispronounces many of them in peculiar ways.

 

I feel I need to work with her. She is making a lot of progress with her classroom
teacher so that's good.

 

We do have a date and time for the closing which isn't soon enough for me.
Yesterday, our final chore was performed. Maybe I will go and clean up after the
workmen but that will be it.

Taurid fireball

This is Venus and Jupiter (on top)  Mars is just to the left of Venus. I could see it with my naked eye but the camera doesn't register it. Officially this is a conjunction of Mars and Venus. A few days ago, the three were in a tight pattern but they have spread apart considerably

Maya working on her letters yesterday

Maples at the old house about 10 days ago taken by a neighbor during the evening. Steve is in charge of leaf removal. Almost all gone. More work to be done on the house tomorrow and I will come by for a final cleaning and hope that is all.

The Mars -Venus conjunction was to peak early this morning. I've been missing the various conjunctions due to clouds, daylight savings time and what have you but today at 5:30 am, I was up trying to get Steve's camera in manual mode. While I was out there, a massive meteor  fell just to the north of the conjunctions. Wasn't expecting to see that! Looked it up. It was part of the Taurid fireball display which is to peak tonight. They don't call it a shower as the most that will fall will be 7 an hour but the size of the meteors make it spectacular. Also the Northern Lights were to be this far south but again, missing in action.

 

I awoke Steve for help with the camera that in the end was not any more useful than the iphone despite the telephotolens. But before he would help me, he had to go through his set routine. No shortcuts even though the sun was going to come up soon. My favorite: Shanna called to say she was in labor with Tess, a absolutely minimum drive of 12 hours, on laundry day. He insisted on doing the laundry even though Shanna had laundry facilities and time was awasting. He now justifies the delay because as it turned out, Shanna was NOT in labor. But he is very, very rigid. When I used to go there by myself, I would be out the door in less than 15 minutes.

 

But the meteor sighting was a plus. I have not seen many in my long life despite staying up for when they are to occur. I've seen them only during times they were not expected, the biggest one by far was in Manistique, Michigan 16 years ago just as I was about to go to bed. (and the sun doesn't set until almost 11 pm that time of year) Actually the sun wasn't completely set but to the east, the meteor fell less than a mile from us. Very bright. It almost looked like fireworks but there was no one there.

 

It is so nice out. My friend and I were out bright and early for a 14 mile bike ride. We did have to endure a mile of rushhour traffic but then, deserted roads. There are still a few trees out, notably the sugar maples. And bonus, no wind.

Hay maze

Maya was here for most of the afternoon. Since we have moved and especially since school began, we rarely see her and she needs us the most of all the grandbabies. But she does not have school 2 days this week.

To the orchards that are only a few miles from here. They aren't as fancy as the one we took her to before (though the prices are even higher) but they do have some animals the other doesn't, namely her favorite: horses. There was even a calf to feed. They also have a hay maze, which took her awhile to master.

Such a nice day. If only it would stay like this. She practiced bicycling and then went on a walk with Grandpa.

There's a helicopter in my yard

I harvested one of my Brussels sprout plants yesterday

stopped at Goodrich woods this morning on my bike ride

Daniel

the helicopter that landed right next door

No trick or treaters here last night though we did have candy if anyone showed up. There are only 2 houses with toddlers, no elementary school kids and just a few older kids. Our neighbor had asked several months ago for permission to have in her father-in-law land a helicopter between our two houses. Somehow that didn't happen then but last night I got a text saying it was on for today. I had the grandkids, minus Maya, on hand. It circled our house a couple of times before landing. They let the kids climb insde.

We will have a week of Indian summer. Yay! I was numb from the bike ride this morning. I was glad for the extra hour of daylight in the morning sticking to paved roads as the week of rain has made the dirt roads very slippery and sloppy.

I tried to saw through the stalk of the Brussels sprouts with various knives until I decided just to pull the whole plant out of the ground. It is huge. I have 3 more plants that now will get more light so the sprouts will develop more. I sautéed them with garlic and treated them with balsamic vinegar holding the bacon as I had a vegetarian friend come to dinner. We then watched the remaining episodes of Black Mirror.

As we waited for the helicopter to show, the kids played with our riding toys on the driveway. Nice and sunny