Busy Fall Days

I am sure most of you find yourself very busy this time of year, trying to finish up garden work, celebrating Halloween, planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas and generally getting ready for Old Man Winter. It has been the same here, and I still have a ways to go before I can relax and feel like I have a grip on things again. I interspersed this post with photos of what the leaves are looking like here at home; it's really getting pretty.

I finished up the last of the ghost stories presentations on Saturday, with a performance at the West Virginia Independence Hall Museum. It was a dark and rainy day, but I enjoyed the long drive to Wheeling, WV, which is in the northern panhandle of our state. I take the road that follows the Ohio River all the way up, a gorgeous, quiet drive through small towns and pretty scenery. I allowed plenty of extra time so I didn't have to hurry and could just enjoy the trip. It was an overnight stay, but I was lucky enough to meet up with the Tarowskys--Judi and her husband Tom came to listen to stories, then we went out for a long, leisurely dinner. Afterward Judi and I worked on the brochure for a program of Celtic stories we are planning to offer as a storytelling team. Both of us know many Celtic stories and I have quite a few ballads; Judi tells folktales from Wales mixed with others from Scotland and Ireland. I am excited about the possibilities for this venture.

This week I have been back to work on furniture, trying to get a few things turned out quickly to fill spaces in Ravenswood, as sales have been very good there for the past month. I also needed a shelf or cabinet or something for Marietta after we sold one of the Hoosier cabinets there. Larry also worked on furniture, repairing, spraying, and even building a ladder to add to the booths.

Other to-do list items included writing a few articles that were due, designing a couple flyers, and working on plans for the Christmas carols program. And, best of all, two storytelling friends, one from Philadelphia and one from Brooklyn, NY, came to visit. It was just an overnight stay, but it had been three or four years since I'd seen them, and it was so good to reconnect.

Outside is really looking like fall at last; it's taken a long time for the leaves to change this year for some reason--maybe because the temperatures stayed unusually warm? We have not had a frost yet, although some areas of our state have had some good snowfall already. I still have a few outdoor chores to do to be ready for winter, and I am thinking time is running short. So I'd better get on it, hadn't I?


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