Summer's Gone

Woowee! 40 deg nights are reminding us that the leaves will turn a bit earlier than last year. Our non-winterized cabins are good about holding in the cold air. Turkeys by the dozen walk prissily across the road and into the woods. Although we’ve not seen them, neighbors tell us there are several bears, coyotes and bobcats roaming. We did hear the chorus of coyotes singing one evening as we returned to the cabin by flashlight, making them seem closer. A black squirrel, thought at first to be a mink, dashed along the roadside one afternoon as we lumbered up the hill in our old Blazer to our cabin. The main grocery store has dried stalks of corn slumping like tired soldiers against the outside walls. All this reminds us sharply that fall is settling here in this part of New York.

Our trip last week to the closest launderette gave us a breathtaking view of both the Poconos and lower Catskills wearing early colors of yellow and red. Maples are usually the first to announce their new clothes. And the biggest and prettiest tree to watch is adjacent to the launderette.

The bath house has taken on a new coat of floor paint, the compost toilet is out of its packing box and sitting ready to be connected to all the myriad of piping that will wend its way through the roof. Richard is building steps up the bank to the nice path Joe made for us through the now-dying ferns to our parking spaces behind the cabin. We completed dressing up our patio. We hauled in white gravel that had been at the store the last two years to make a cushion over the stony ground on the southeast side of the cabin.

We now see that half or more of our clothing will have to move back to the South. We don’t need half of what is hanging in our loft. We could do with three changes of clothes for each season. Dressing up around here is wearing clean clothes. Easy to do.