At The End Of Autumn

There might be five percent of the leaves left hanging at my place in the mountains. Tiny bits of color remain.

One oddball is still green. I have never seen it do color though. Usually the leaves are frosted off.

I shuffled slowly around the garden after it warmed a bit. Shuffling was the only option on ground buried in a three inch deep layer of leaves. I shuffled and I marveled to think that all those leaves will have vanished almost completely by next June.

Should it ever decide to rain or snow or some such strange thing as that, the leaves will compact and start to decompose. Right now they are being consumed by fire in these parts. Please let it rain.

The Witch Hazel blooms on the day of a full November moon. It smells just like smoke.

I kept on shuffling. I needed to measure the well head/hose bib department next door to clarify the interior dimensions needed for a new well head cover.

I checked on the way by. Our tiny little stream, now invisible for the most part, still has water coming through the culvert beneath the scenic byway. So many other brooks and streams have stopped flowing in these mountains. Ours must have a pretty good water shed.

Sister #2 made the brilliant suggestion of using a big outdoor storage bin with the bottom cut out for the new well head cover. I had been racking my brain trying to come up with a solution that had an easy to open lid so Bulbarella could get to the hose bibs; not wanting to build another box myself. The old wood box covering the well head fell apart after eight years.

November 13th and we still have not had a killing freeze. Good thing I suppose since I am only now getting around to winterizing the well head next door. I finally settled on a wicker looking deck box that won't get here for another week at least. The wood looking one I preferred was twenty inches longer than needed. No need to take up that much space in the garden. Wicker will do.

This should be a great solution for covering and winterizing a well head. These deck boxes are built like ice chests with thick plastic walls. They don't have the same kind of insulation of course, but just trapping the ground heat in a closed space is step one. Insulation and a heat tape on the pipes is the finishing touch.

It looks like I may even be able to assemble the thing and simply leave the bottom panel out. That would be nice, better than cutting a hole in it. Well see.

It was another smoky day from all the fires. When I woke up to forty one degrees with a suggested low of thirty, it made me wonder if all these fires are even affecting the low temperatures in the region. All that heated air rises.

High on the low spot we wait for the change. Something's in the air.