Sunday Update - Week 40

 Okay, according to the internet, I was wrong about last week being Week 38, so this update is for week 40.  :shrug:  I must've mis-numbered a week somewhere along the way.

Anyhoo...

In writerly stuffs, I finished inputting the first round of edit notes and began the next round of edits.  In this round, I do a page of notes and then I enter them, instead of waiting until I've noted the whole book.  So, as of last night, I've created 4 pages worth of notes and entered three of them, which brings the finished part of the book to 23 pages.  Not sure where the fourth page of notes will bring me to today or how many more pages I'll get done today, but it'll be something.  Slow going, but necessary.

I actually finished reading two books last week.  Yay.  

On the activity front, I managed 5 out of 7 days.  Walking, cleaning, and yard work.  Weight was 178 as of Wednesday.

In baking news, I made a cheater cake this week.  Betty Crocker - yellow cake and chocolate frosting.  I might've also made cookies, but I can't remember if I did those this week or the week before.  And I did a baked spaghetti dish - cooked the noodles, heated the sauce, cooked chicken patties then layered it all in a 8x10 pan and covered it with mozzarella.  Baked it at 375F for 30 minutes until the cheese was bubbly and starting to brown.  I think we'll be having the leftovers for dinner tonight.

It's fall, so you know what that means... Leaves.  Lots and lots of leaves.  We're trying something different this year - using the mower to suck them all up.  It's a lot of emptying the bag into the wheelbarrow and dumping the wheelbarrow, but Hubs says it's easier than raking them all up, so we're going with that.  We'll see how it goes.  I was weeding and did one wheelbarrow dump - basically three bag-dumps worth. It's definitely easier on my shoulders than raking, but he's the one doing most of this work, so if it works for him, it works for me.

As for weeding, I only have two places left to weed - the garden paths - and I'll be done with that until Spring.  Yay.

That one buck has been stopping by on a regular basis now.  Checking out the ladies and since the ladies all stop here to eat, he's stopping here, too.  The neighbors are starting to talk about him - as in 'hey, have you seen that buck?'  Shhh.  If you talk about him, people will want to come shoot him.  He isn't here, he was never here, and I don't know what you're talking about.  =op

Okay, I think that's about all I have to say about last week.  How was your last week?

Trees and Leaves (Or The Joy of Raking)

This is Oberon.  He's the fairy oak that lives in our front yard.  Now, this picture doesn't do him justice.  There's nothing for perspective.  Just understand, that's a two-car wide driveway next to him.  Or to give you something better to go on, here's me standing next to him for my author photo shoot.

His sprawling limbs stretch the length of our house and then some.  He's a big boy.  A big boy with lots of leaves.  Lots of leaves that dump down onto our yard.

Oh, he's not the only culprit.  He's just the worst single offender.  We also have 6 black walnuts, three hickorys, two smaller oaks, two black cherries, and two elms.  (Plus, 4 cedars, but they don't cause me any grief at leaf raking time.)  And that's only the trees in our yard, not the trees in our woods or the trees on our neighbor's wooded lot next door.  He's has sycamores that cheerfully drop leaves onto our south lawn. 

Don't get me wrong.  I love our trees, even if Oberon's the only one I've named*.  I even love raking.  It's a lot of work but it's great exercise that I only get for a while in the Autumn.  I'm just being funny this morning because the raking we did these past couple days has left me a little sore.

Hubs and I moved all the leaves into like 5 piles over the past week or so.  Then the piles were moved down the hill or across the yard into position to be shoved into the woods.  The last couple of days, we've been shoving those piles into the woods.  We've only got half of the biggest pile left.  Then we'll go into the woods and spread the leaves around a little.  Should be fun. 

Hubs likes to joke that we're working on filling up the valley behind our house, but by the time next Autumn rolls around, the leaves will be mostly gone through a process of decay and animals walking through them, kicking them around, and degrading them further.  Kind of like a bunch of natural compost piles except the critters are turning the compost for us. And then we'll start the process over again. 

The joys of living in the woods.  I mean, we could leave the leaves, but then our yard would have no grass at all (it's pretty piddlin' as it is).  We could also burn the leaves like some of our neighbors do, but that leaves a nasty burnt spot on the ground and the heat from below isn't good for the trees.  So, we rake.  It's a small price to pay for the shade our trees provide all summer long.

What about you?  Do you rake, mulch, ignore your leaves?  Gah, do you even have leaves?  I can't imagine living somewhere that doesn't have to be raked.  


*After I wrote this, I remembered I also named one just off the yard - Little Red.  It's a red oak I've been babying since we found it back there.  It was maybe 4 ft tall when I took it under my wing and now it's easily double that.  It's so pretty in the fall.