Another Concert

It was time to hit the road again and I thought it would be cool to watch the odometer along the way.  It was my father who got me to notice palindromes on the odometer.  He would often point them out as we were driving around.  He's also the one who got me to look for routes that involved the fewest number of stop signs or stop lights when traveling.  Feeding my OCD.  Maybe that's where it came from.  Anyway, that's another story.  As it turned out on this trip, we got having so much fun that I forgot to watch the odometer.  Ah, well.

So the original purpose of this trip was to go attend Heidlebeere's fall concert. Always a good time. But in the run up to that event, we were able to finagle our way into a side trip to Erdbeere's place for a couple of days.  In fact, what's even better, Edrbeere decided to come along and go to the concert, too!  O frabjous day! Callooh, callay!

At our house, peak fall colors have come and gone.  But when we got to Erdbeere's house we saw that fall was in full swing!  It looked very good on her place.

She had some nice Halloween decorations out.  Very nice.  Very festive!

The next morning Brombeere and Edrbeere went to pick up her oldest from school.  Always a good time, a good opportunity to hit the playground for a few minutes.

Townsend's little brother likes to tag along to these trips, gets him the opportunity to get in some play time, as well.  They can always be counted on to enjoy any playground time they can get.

Then the day's big event - lunch at the a train themed diner.  Nice.  This place was busy, of course, especially since we got there in time for the lunch rush.  Fortunately, they have a very nice waiting area, lots of train toys to entertain while waiting for seating.

And it did very well at keeping the boys happy while we waited. 

When the boys are happy, everybody's happy.  Isn't that how the saying goes?

Pretty soon we were seated.  Then came the hard part - deciding what to get.  "Mom, what do I like?"

The cool thing about this diner was that to food is brought out of the kitchen on a little train.  The engine pulls the cars to carry everybody's order. 

Then the waitress comes over and unloads the train, giving everyone their order. 

Pretty slick!  And the food was good, too!  Of course, any place that has a Ruben sandwich is half way there.  The other half is that it has to be good.  And this one was!

It was a fun place.  I'd go back. 

The only down side?  The train games in the waiting area were such a big attraction that it didn't take long before the boys had left their lunch and were back at the games.  It was a fun lunch.

One fun thing that Edrbeere does is let the kids color with erasable markers on the patio door.  They love it.  Moon was drawing, well, I'm not sure what Moon was drawing.  Could have been pictures or it could have been letters, like his brother.

Townsend was still on the train theme.  Heck, Townsend is usually on the train theme.  His favorite train is the Blue Line.  He would write the first letter of the name of all the stops from one end of the Blue Line to the other.  Then he began putting dots above them.  I think those were lines you could transfer to at each stop.  I could be wrong about that.  But I found it amazing that he knows the stops that well.  And not just the Blue Line.  He knows the other lines pretty well, too. 

The rest of us stuck to mundane, Halloween art.  Very appropriate for this time of year.  Erdbeere did a very nice bat.

Brombeere did several things, pumpkins, leaves of several different fall colors, hearts, and so on.

I did a pumpkin.  I think its a pretty cool thing, letting them color on the glass.  And they love it.  Every time we visit there's new art work on the glass.

The next day was the trip over to Heidlebeere's place so there was a trip to the store to get some things for the trip.  While there they saw a prickly pear.  I hadn't realized that was a real fruit.  I had always thought it was a kind of weed, with little burrs that stick to your clothes.  But, nope.  Its an actual fruit. So we tried some.  It wasn't too bad, though the seeds were pretty obnoxious. 

Later there were stories.  Townsend is to where he can read the story - pretty nice. 

The next day was the boys' swim lessons.  They like those.  It was fun to watch.

This was a place designed specifically for swim lessons so they had the pool divided into eight or ten areas and had lessons going in pretty much all of them. I really liked the lessons for the little kids.  They were geared to getting the kids comfortable and at ease in the water.  Some of them definitely were not.  Moon, however, seemed pretty comfortable.

I thought he did very well, with lots of help and encouragement from his Dad.  He was having a good time.

Townsend had his goggles and was ready to have at it.  He was in the water, doing different strokes, swimming back and forth in his lane.  He was having a good time.

After lessons it was back to the house to load up the car and hit the road.  Moon wasn't coming on this trip, but he was right there supervising the loading process.

We traveled pretty good, not many stops so we were able to make good time.  One stop we did make was in Geneseo, Illinois, where we saw this cute little pig.

When we got there Townsend was excited - cousins and a new selection of books!

A good time was had by all.

The next day, after church, there wasn't enough time to go back to the house so we headed to a nearby park to pass the little bit of time before the concert.  It was very nice.  A little windy, but still quite nice.  The colors were just a little passed peak but still very pretty.

Townsend was in heaven - he ran from one place to the next, trying them all before time ran out.

Climbing

Twirling

Swinging

Sliding

All too soon, it was time to leave the park and head for the concert.  We ended up parking around the  corner so we had to walk about a block. 

The choir is a community choir that has been in the community for quite a while.  Their concerts are in a church, a very nice setting.

This was what we came for, and it was very good.  I like the music this choir does.  And Heidlebeere doe very well.  It's pretty stuff.  She likes it, we like it.  Its perfect.

And the concert was a good length, too.  An hour and a half and it was back on the road, to get Erdbeere back home and us, too.  It was a lot to squeeze into one trip. about 1,000 miles total, and we didn't get home until midnight.  But it was a good time with both Erdbeere and Heidlebeere and their families.  I'd do it again.

A Few Leaves

Every year its the same thing.  The leaves fall off the trees.  And they get everywhere.

On the grass, the driveway, out in the street.  They're everywhere.

Can't let them just lay there on the lawn, they say that's not good for your lawn.  We always have to clean them off.

They get on the cars and anything else that spends any time in the yard.

When it starts its not so bad.  In fact, we're conditioned to think its cool - you know, the colorful leaves of fall and all that.

But gradually, more and more leaves fall.

Pretty soon it gets to where you can't ignore it any longer.  You have to do something about them.  Some people burn them.  Some people actually like the smell of burning leaves in the fall.  We don't do that.  Mostly because we don't have a good place to burn them.  When you burn them you have ash and soot to deal with, from the fire pit.  We don't have a good place for that so we don't burn them.

For many years we raked them.  When the kids where still here we'd enlist them and get them to help.  Kids playing in piles of leaves can be pretty fun.  Our kids really liked that, especially when they were little.  That's been a few years ago, though.  The kids have pretty much all moved out now.  Now, if they're going to get cleaned up, its up to me and Brombeere.

I finally got tired of raking.  So I got a little leaf blower.  Its not a big one, not super strong.  But it does the trick. I use the blower for pretty much the whole job except sometimes a little clean up and finishing work. The picture makes it look like I'm just standing there, but I was actively blowing the leaves.  I hold the blower down low because I find it more efficient, more effective.  Anyway, I usually divide the yard into three sections.  The two sides of the driveway and the back yard.  In the back there aren't as many trees so it there aren't as many leaves.  The two sides of the driveway take about an hour and half each.  That's mostly because even though the one side is smaller, it has the biggest tree - only one tree, but its a big one.  Lots and lots and lots of leaves.  I always start on the opposite side of the yard and blow toward the street.  The challenge is that the closer to the street you get the bigger pile of leaves you're blowing along.

It doesn't leave the lawn spotless, it does leave a few leaves scattered around.  And the leaves have to be pretty dry to be able to blow them.  But it works. And no risk of blisters.

We have a little ditch out at the street.  Sometimes the leaves, when they're all raked and piled, make an impressive pile, even allowing for them having to fill in the ditch before they can be heaped up by the road.

Because of the great big tree on the one side of the driveway there are a ton of leaves.  So that section of the yard is probably the most work.  Especially since I usually do well into the neighbor's yard.  I figure all the leaves there are pretty much from our tree anyway.  So all those leaves more than fill up the little ditch and still makes a big pile.

Its always nice to have that chore done.  Once that's done I always feel like we're ready for winter.  Well, that and once I move the snowblower back out to the front of the garage and the lawnmower to the back.  Then I'm ready for winter.

A Volunteer

This spring, when I began mowing the lawn, I cleaned up the area just off the deck so I could  mow around all the junk piled there.  You see, last fall and over winter, as our garage filled up with stuff and became essentially a storage unit for a couple of our kids, a few things got pushed out the door into the backyard.  So when it came time to start mowing the grass I consolidated the mess into an area as small as reasonable.  And so the mowing season began.

In June, as we were having a cookout to celebrate Himbeere's birthday, I happen to take a picture of the area by the grill, still looking pretty much like it did at the beginning of the mowing season.  The grill, a couple of broken wheel barrows, and a pile of tires.  The hose was nearby but at this point I hadn't yet moved it up onto the pile.

June 18, 2018

So the grass cutting continued uneventfully through July.  Then, along in early August, as I was mowing along, lo and behold, I saw we'd had a volunteer spring up!  A bit late in the summer to be starting up but there it was!

August 4, 2018

Since it basically wasn't in the way of anything I thought it would be interesting to let it grow and see what it would turn out to be.  I could tell from the leaves it was some kind of squash or gourd.  But whether it was a squash, pumpkin, zucchini, or cucumber, or something else was anybody's guess.  I suppose someone who did more gardening would be more familiar with the different kinds of leaves and might have been able to take a guess at what kind of plant it was, but not me.

August 18, 2108

The next time I mowed, the volunteer was flowering and I thought maybe the fruit would mature before the end of our growing season.  That would be pretty cool!

September 9, 2018

It wasn't long before a few of the flowers had turned into little gourds.  Didn't look like any kind of edible squash I'd ever seen.  But then I thought maybe its just not mature.  Maybe it will turn into acorn squash or something yummy like that.  Time would tell, I thought.

September 15, 2018

Alas, within a week the temperatures had begun to drop and it obviously was affecting the plant.  The leaves had picked up a bit of blight from the cold.

September 15, 2018

When I saw that I wasn't sure how much longer the volunteer would have for its fruits to mature.  At this point, they still didn't look like they were going to turn into anything more useful than fall decorations.

September 15, 2018

There it was, fruit and more flowers.  Unfortunately, those flowers most likely weren't going to have much of a chance.  This late in the season and still flowers?  Not likely.

September 15, 2018

And the gourds hadn't really gotten any bigger.  It wasn't looking very good for them.

October 15, 2018

The season continued a few more weeks and then we got our first snow.  That's not good for growing plants and it pretty much put an end to our volunteer.

October 15, 2018

The gourds didn't seem affected by the snow but it sure did a number on the vines.

October 15, 2018

All the time the vine was growing I hadn't touched it, hadn't disturbed any of the gourds.  They lay right where they grew.

October 15, 2018

On the ground or up on the grill.  They had come along but now it was pretty much at an end.

October 15, 2018

There were several of the gourds laying here and there.  None of them had gotten very big.  But, what the heck.  We harvested them anyway.

After all, they'll  make good fall decorations.  Since they went to all the trouble of growing, all on their own, the least we could do was show them off, right?  But then, again, maybe not.  Would that encourage others to volunteer?  Who knows.  The big question in my mind was, where did the seeds come from?  They don't look anything at all like anything we normally have in our house or yard.  Guess we'll never know.