October 18, 2010

Early Fall Happenings

Fall has hit. It's been an extended season this year of warmth, so tomatoes, peppers, and beans didn't freeze until the other night. I had them extended for ripening warmth with the white "floating row covers" (remay cloth), and occasionally covering with blankets on borderline nights. Other than kale, chinese cabbage, and chard, my outdoor gardening season is done. Now for mother nature to do her thing with tucking in the scattered flower seeds for new growth next year, and stronger root development for the perennials.

Torkel, my felted tree-hugging Tomte
My last color/design challenge for my class was using Tetrad colors of the Color Wheel. It was a busy month with garden harvest, readying the greenhouse for winter, and LOTS of company! Needless to say, at the last minute I decided felting was my thing I could do, producing something! ... Thinking ... I looked at my favorite sculpted needlefelted head, still needing a body and finishing. His skin colors chose my tetrad colors: blue-green, violet, red-orange, and yellow. You'd think the face is orange, green and gray, but no, not when compared with the 4-in-1 color tool. Since tetrad is a square of double complementary colors, I was thinking square - like plaid, for his coat. So I finished Torkel, my tree-hugging elf (or Swedish Tompte).

In the above picture are vased zinnias, brought Saturday by my friend Marty. We had a houseful that day. Various peoples have come to help cut wood, taking some home for themselves, so Saturday was the Johnson's day. Dawson and Splarah came, Gary, and our house guest Michael, who cooked the supper main dish (he's now in a place of his own closer to his new job). I've not gathered many flowers to dry this year, not thinking I'm making anything with them, but did gather some, so that's pictured, along with the "pumpkins?" behind (volunteer squash we don't know for sure what they are, but as I posted on my kitchen blog, I'm still roasting the seeds and using them as pumpkins).

The round circle is the broken glass.
I was just upstairs checking on my home brews and heard a crash, expecting it to be something in the greenhouse. SHOCK! The middle window in the dining area was broken - the outer one of a two-glass window. The culprit still there, most likely stunned, so not flying away. His victim lay dead. So what happened?  What I've identified as a Sharp-shinned or Cooper's Hawk was chasing a chickadee for it's meal, and they both bashed into the window. Because it was stunned it stood around for a long time for me to capture many pics!

The hawk and broken glass fallen between two-glass window
Sharp-shinned or Cooper's Hawk?
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Wood cutting. We like burning aspen - our "hardest" wood for longer burning
Cleaned the back porch corner for extra wood storage
Wood storage by front door with ore buckets, etc

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