Dear Autumn, I Hate Your Guts, And It's My Blogiversary!

Wow.  
I almost can't remember how to write a blog post.  I began this blog on October 1, 2008, and 840+ posts later, I have sputtered to a very slow crawl.

For that very first little attempt at blogging, click here.

Me and That Old House took separate Summer vacations.  All I've written since June are some goofy Facebook posts, and most of those were written by my dog Dylan DiPoochy.

Yes, he is that talented.

While I was being a happy summertime layabout,

poor ol' Summer was KO'd by . . .

 

It sneaks up on me every year.

I never see it coming.

Even displays like this one fly right by me;

I don't even see them.

 What is this called, again?  Oh yeah.  
Denial.

It ain't just a river in Egypt, is it? 

A picture from October 2013, our side yard.  And its leaves.  Lots and lots of leaves, and more to fall.

I am very, very grateful that I do not have to rake all those leaves.  Bless the landscape guys.

I do hate to see Summer fold its tent and take a hike.
And leave all those leaves on the ground.
(Haha ... see what I did?)

Yes, there are compensations.

Fall's colors are crazy-pants -- wild and brilliant. 

Seasonal veggies look like aliens, wacky and warty.

Mother Nature's last crazy fling before winter.

And Fall decorating is stupid easy.  You can't go wrong.

Put a mum or a pumpkin pretty much anywhere,
and POOF! instant Autumn bling.

Fall is both an end -- of warm weather, bountiful crops

and flowers, a life outdoors -- and a beginning.

It's the start of the holiday season, with Hallowe'en kicking off

the parade that won't end until it is 2015.  Yikes.

It was a long and beautiful summer. 

Look . . . Can you spot our Dylan DiPoochy in this picture?  :-)

There have been a few changes here at That Old House.  

Those can wait for another post.

Meanwhile, I wish That Old House a Happy Blog Anniversary.

Six years.  That's a lot of chit-chat under the bridge, isn't it?

-- Cass

Hey, October . . . Who Invited You?

Without my noticing,
the month of October muscled its way onto my
calendar, and pretty much KO'd Summer.

See the little guy, below?

That's Rudy, our ghostest with the mostest.

Rudy tells me to get over it, to gracefully relinquish the long days

and soft nights of Summer, and accept the flamboyant decay of Fall.

Okay.

In a few short weeks, our yard will look like this - 

colorful, and messy:

It's not all bad; I do have my favorites in the Fall.

Like, pumpkins.

 I'm looking forward to another pumpkin carving smackdown with

my daughter Anne, in which we will each take a round orange orb,

scoop out its guts, and turn it into an artistic masterpiece.

 I'll do something like this:

And . . . Anne will do something like this,

totally humbling me.

 These were our 2012 initial attempts.  Anne just got better with practice.

I got more ambitious, and more disastrous.  And, okay - ridiculous.

Then, there are the tomatoes.

What is it about tomato plants, that as frost approaches,

they just start pooping out more and more of their product?

Even at That Old House, our hardscrabble tomato plants

are still pumping out the goods, 

although I'm leaving most for the local critters now.

Cold weather coming; they need to EAT.

I do love me a good farm stand in October.

Who doesn't like piles of warty, ugly gourds?

And, inside the house, it's time to break out the orange.

Vintage lustre cream jug and sugar bowl,
hand-painted, Japan. So cute. I found them at Somerville
Center Antiques, before I had a booth there.

Including linens, like this big tablecloth.

Hand embroidered pure vintage cotton,
also found at Somerville Center Antiques.

And dishes like Johnson Brothers Fresh Fruit pattern,

a Craigslist bargain from 2 years ago.

(I'd tell you how little I paid for service for 8, with lots of extras,

in mint condition, but I'm almost embarrassed.  Almost.  Okay, since you're my friend: $20.)

 Fall does have its good side.

Fall decorating is crazy easy, because pumpkins and mums

and cornstalks and hay bales and orange and yellow and

gold and brown and red and purple - yes, purple - are so photogenic.

You kind of can't miss.

Which means that tomorrow I probably should get

those boxes marked "Autumn" up from the dungeon cellar,

and start falling for Fall.

But I'll still miss Summer,

and I'll never get used to the days shrinking up.

Wow, I am really stubborn, aren't I?

I hope your Thursday is a good one,

and maybe I'll see you here tomorrow; I've got some furniture to feature.

Best wishes to you all -- Cass

Autumn actually used to be my favorite season.

Now, it signals the end of another year,

and I guess the older I get,

the less I like that.
Paging Doctor Freud . . . .

En Garde! A Tale Of Two Jack O'Lanterns.

It's been many years since I've hacked out a
Jack O'Lantern from an unsuspecting orange gourd.

BOO!

But last night, daughter Anne and I performed
some skin-and-seed-ectomies on a couple of
plump $5 pumpkins from the local supermarket.

 We cleaned them out.

Anne helped me, as I am sort of slipshod about these things.

Carving pumpkins with my daughter is

very much like coloring Easter Eggs with her.

I take an egg, draw a lopsided bunny in white crayon, and dip it in pink dye.

She takes an egg, and inks in a facsimile of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  In living color.

I was ridiculously proud of my traditional,
goof-ball-faced, gap-toothed Jack O'Lantern.  

And then . . . I saw Anne's.

Yes, it's a raven, and it is quothing "Nevermore."

Complete with quoth marks.

(Apologies to Mr. Poe.  I'm only funning.)

(Want to read The Raven by EdgarAllen Poe?  Click here!)

No stencil.  Free hand.

Her first attempt at pumpkin carving.  

So, while my first pumpkin carving in probably 15 years
isn't exactly  a work of art, guess what?
Pumpkin carving is one of my Favorite Things.

I want to do more of them,
but Shop Rite is sold out!
**************************

We have a few leaves down at That Old House.

Howard and Annie did a lot of leaf removal today, bless their hearts.

I made meatloaf -- Cass

Claudia at Mockingbird Hill Cottage is our hostess for

A Favorite Thing . . . on Saturdays.   Click here!

P. S.   I was going to include a recipe for an apple cake in this post, and I had better pictures of the Jack O'Lanterns, too . . . but after a few pictures loaded, Blogger would not load anymore.  It just stopped.  Dead.  Bad Blogger.  Bad, bad Blogger.  I've been having problems with very slow picture loading, but it's never just refused pictures at all before.  Anyone else have this problem?

Farmstand Veggies and A Beach House Cigar

Where were we this weekend?

  No, not at a flower show.

Farmstand Flowers, Orient, NY

We were stalking things like this:

Possible captions for this picture:
1) "I told you not to touch that frog!  Next time listen to your mother."
2) "Hey, Doc, you got a salve for this?"
3) "What do you mean, I'm not Jack O'Lantern material?"
4) Getting the blue ribbon this fall, the gourd submitted by the Federal Government's
Plum Island Animal Disease Research facility, just off shore . . . .

What would your caption be?

 *************************************

Yup, we were out on eastern Long Island.

We gathered, 11 of us, at the beach house,

to celebrate niece Mary's 22nd birthday.

It's been a long time since that many people stayed overnight in that house.

We should do it more often!

My sister Peggy, her husband Bill, Howard and I did some farm stand stalking. 

We headed east to Sep's in East Marion and Latham's in Orient.

When I look at this picture, a dozen remarks spring to mind.

None of which is blog fodder.

Don't ask me what I think when I look at this over-achiever.

My sister made friends with some weeny-teeny-mini veggies.

***********************************

Vegetables in the Fall look like they've just

tumbled out of a Dutch Old Master's canvas.

There is such bounty.

Summer's last hurrah, and those veggies that will go the distance and last into the winter months.

Peggy was so fond of this tiny purple pepper (and it is smaller than it looks in the picture),

that the farm stand lady gave it to her, along with a pinky-finger sized lavender eggplant.

This was a good thing, as we didn't want Peggy crying on the way home without her new friends.

Cauliflower season is in full swing, and James Beard and I agree:

Long Island Cauliflower is the bomb.

And sometimes it is even a bargain.

I did not make this up.  Scout's honor.

Oh dear.  At Sep's, they have painted the almost-a-word "PUNKINS" on a display.

Do we forgive them for being too cute?  Yes, because pumpkins just are that cute.

We piled all our vegetables and funky punky pumpkins into the red minivan,

and headed back to the beach house.  After a mile or so . . . Sniff sniff.

And . . . the unmistakable scent of cauliflower perfumed the air.

When we were kids, we'd hold our breath passing the cauliflower fields.

Although they weren't nearly as bad as the duck farms used to be!

Back at the beach house,

Howard headed for the bench on our lawn.

Long, late afternoon shadows . . . the days are so much shorter now.  Bummer.

He was checking out the unusually low tide.

Accompanied by a cigar.

It was a terrific weekend, and we'll probably be back next weekend,

taking advantage of those last glorious, mild Fall

weekends before Winter blows in and makes us all crabby.

If by "us all" we mean "me."

************************************************

Visit Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.

************************************************

Coming up in a day or so, a TOH blog post about an enchanted village.

Really.  Including Indians and little people.

Happy New Week!   -- Cass

Soup, Sandwiches, and SUN

Pssst. . . lean in.  I don't want to speak too loudly.
Just in case Mother Nature is listening.
But as of noon today, we have not had any rain.

When you have had rain every day

for longer than you should have rain every day,

this is big.  Say hallelujah!  Sunshine.  It's a Good Thing.

***********************************

So is lunch.

Come join Rudy, Howard, Anne and me for lunch in the Sunroom.

Rudy the Ghost is our collective conscience.  Click here if you want more on Rudy.

  Back on Sunday, Anne made lunch for us.

Now this is a real tablescape.  Not one put together for a blog post.

(Which most of mine are, but shhh don't tell.)

She fixed The Great American Lunch:

A mug of Campbell's Cream of Tomato Soup, and a Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

This is pretty much the only time we use American Cheese.

'Cause it makes a lovely, melty grilled sandwich, well done, on rye.

Howard not being a fan of American Cheese, Anne put provolone and

hard salami on his, and I have to admit that it looks pretty dang tasty.

"But why," I asked my daughter, "did you cut them lengthwise?"

"Most people (meaning me) cut sandwiches cross-wise."

"Because," answered my logical and creative-thinker daughter,

"these pieces are longer, thinner, and therefore easier to dunk."

And so they were.  They fit beautifully into the mugs of soup.  No mess.

I never would have thought of this.

Having grown children can be quite humbling.

On the table - pumpkin lunch plates from WalMart, woven pumpkin place mats from ???,

Halloween napkins I sewed back in 1874, my favorite green plaid mugs given to me by a

high school friend of my daughters, a soup spoon from our Williamsburg Scroll flatware,

and on the right of this picture, Howard still in his suit and tie from Sunday morning.

I really am enjoying my new baby Canon camera, so I'm taking lots of pictures.

I am out of Nikon hell.

OH!  One more thing.

See that chair across the table?  It's one of four we bought last year,

for one dollar apiece, and they are really nice, sturdy shield back chairs, by Drexel.

But . . . they are old, and their once lovely finish is pretty kaput.

I am planning on painting them a creamy white, and then I've got a plan for the seat covers

that involves vegetables, and the borrowed talents of daughter Anne.

She hasn't committed to this project yet, but when she sees me fumbling along on my own,

I have confidence that she will take pity and pitch in.

I fibbed.

There is one more ONE MORE THING.

On Sunday, Howard jotted some notes on the morning's bulletin.

I will pay ONE MILLION DOLLARS to anyone who can

accurately translate all of his chicken scratches.

Okay, I fibbed again.  I won't pay anything.

But seriously . . . 

Back many years ago, when Howard and I were working as reporters,

I asked him for some information he'd jotted down in his notebook.

"Sorry, can't give it to you," he said.

"Oh, come on," said I, "you can't be that competitive!"

"No," he said, "but it's been too long since I wrote it, and now I can't read it."
The kicker?  He had made his notes the day before.

To whomever invented the typewriter -- bless your heart.

Linky Parties!

It's Tablescape Thursday at Susan's Between Naps On The Porch blog.  Click here, my pretties!

At Coloradolady's blog, it's Vintage Thingies Thursdays.  Click here!

And No Minimalist Here blog hosts an Open House Party.  Click here!