Fall is Here!

Fall is officially here.  The leaves are turning and there is a crispness to the air that refreshes the soul and an Autumn light that makes every one's completion look good.  I love this time of year here.  We never really had a Fall season in the bay area. It was like someone flipped a switch on October 31, all the leaves dropped off the trees and on November 1 it started raining.  Here Autumn is a longer passage.  Right now the leaves are really yellow, orange and a little bit of red.  Not many of the leaves are falling yet, but there is a trickle of leaves that make a tittering noise as they filter through the branches to the ground.  We take a walk in the afternoons up the "Gulch" near our home and it's truly lovely.

I have been harvesting our garden, canning and getting ready for the cold weather.  We have had a few days of frost and our garden looks a little bleak around the edges.  The tomatoes are gone and the squash.  We have yet to dig up the sweet potatoes. The cabbages, carrots, beets, onions and spinach are doing well.  Hoping to hold out for the fall a little longer before we have to put the garden to rest.  

We tried introducing the chicks, who are now looking more adolescent than like chicks, to the rest of the chickens.   It did not go well.  We are now down to 3 chicks.  Not sure what happened, but our rooster, "Bob Noxious", got after one of them. He is normally a fairly gentle rooster. However, chickens have a brain about the size of a chickpea and it's difficult to figure out why they do what they do.  It would be just our luck that all of the remaining chicks are going to be roosters....jeeze.  

We went to the local Volunteer Fire Department spaghetti feed yesterday.  It really was kind of cool to show up and see so many of our neighbors.  We actually new people. We sat with the new pastor, his wife and children.  They are really great people and not hypocrites, which is terribly refreshing after our experience with our last church.  It's starting to feel like we are part of this community.  We had a nice time and that spaghetti wasn't bad either.  

CyberPixy's Corner

Good morning,

Just sitting with a cup of coffee...really good coffee and thinking about how I ended up here in Southern Oregon, with 4 cats and a plethora of chickens a big garden and a very different life than I was leading in the Bay Area.  Now we are 12 miles from the nearest town, if you can call it that, that has a population of about 2000. Let's just say that the "traffic" is not a problem. I do miss things about where we came from, my family of course, but most everything else is food related. Sourdough bread, local REAL Mexican food, citrus, avocados, exceptional restaurants on every street corner that are opened until 3 am.  Then there are the events and happenings that, by the local people here, are considered very strange and scary. Renaissance fairs, costume parties, critical mass, burning man, Seaman Group, Cacophony Club shenanigans, drag queens and so many other things.  Some times I feel like I'm from another planet. 

However, I have found a small group of friends, here in the woods, who have open minds and a sense of adventure.  This has made me feel more at home here and we have made our own events here, like the Winter Solstice party that we had at our house, where we made Gloog (a Swedish, fruity, spicy, hot alcoholic beverage) and lit it on fire to celebrate the season.  But I do miss the bay area's wild, crazy people and events. Halloween is coming and I know it will be another year of creative drought, this area has no sense of costume and revelry.  I have missed dressing up for things. At my current job there are no costumes allowed, the area doesn't have Halloween events...just a little too scary, I suppose.  My only outlet is to have my own party but our group of like minded friends is still a bit small for that yet...maybe next year...

Well, I know we moved here to be closer to my sister, to be closer to my husbands family, to get out of the rat race and to get our debt paid off.  I believe we made the correct decision for us, we do really love our life in the woods, with the creek in our back yard and being away from the MULTITUDES of people.  We have found a place here and made friends. Our jobs are not horrible, my husband and I are healthy and life is good.