A social distancing typical Thursday began with a trip to the license tag office in Marshall. Got the truck tag and Penlands was open. Love that store, the fried pie lady had delivered and visiting with Georgette is truly a delight. Went over to Publix and shopped the BOGO sale and came home. Unloaded and put away some of the groceries, then got the truck and made a Lowe's trip for two more azaleas and small paint roller. Going to stain the chairs that I bought this summer with the same stain color as the fence. It is a honey color stain. Think that will look good with the darker redwood stain of the front porch and deck. On the way home I called Brenda to see if she would like to ride about the countryside on this beautiful fall day. Right before I picked her up, the electricity went off. Checked the outage map and saw there was an outage in the Leicester area. At first I thought we were a part of that but I got the feeling we weren't. Texted my neighbor, they had electricity, so I alerted Duke Energy about the outage. Brenda and I went down the river road and over to TJs. She hadn't been there before and so it was fun introducing her to one of my favorite places. Roy called while we were returning home and said Duke had called and they think it is a frayed line from the fence install. They were sending a crew. Got home and about ten minutes later the first guy showed up. Sure enough a fence post had been set and cemented on top of a line. Cement eats away at the electrical line coating and thus, loss of electricity. Replaced the line and then an inspector or two came, got information and by about 9:00 pm, everyone had left and I settled in to eat supper, a light supper. All the work delayed feeding the kiddos, so they were happy to have the driveway back to themselves. Frankie, the gray cat with blue eyes, showed up. He is not around much and for this I am thankful. He intimidates all the cats except for a couple of kittens who didn't know any better. In the past when this happens with other male cats, they know or seem to know it is naïve kitten bravado. They take a playful swipe at them but Frankie got all bowed up and wasn't playful at all. This got Mama Cat involved and she took a lick at Frankie and beat him back off the driveway away from her kittens. So, I fed them closer to the garage and played lunch lady Doris by standing there keeping watch so the little ones could eat. Adding lunch lady to my resume along with hawk watcher and dog shoo-er.
On Wednesday, I headed over toward the Waynesville area. Went to Barbers and got some Ever Crisp and Granny Smith apples, and well of course, some apple cider donuts. Made a quick stop in Belk and found the cutest turquoise truck with pumpkins. The pumpkins are a lid and can be removed, so this little truck can be used year round. It will look good on the back porch cause I got that teal/turquoise vibe going.
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Woke up to 35°temps. Our area has a frost warning but surrounding counties have freeze warnings. Remembered last night about the warning, so traipsed back out to bring in roses and azaleas. The dahlias in the backyard don't look as if they were affected, so that's good. A little more time with their dazzling beauty. Yesterday evening after finding the side attachment for the mower, I went back out and picked up mowing where I had left off. The grass is really too high for this mower right now and had to make multiple stops to clear the bottom of the mower. Had to keep enough power to propel it up the hill to get it into the garage. When Mike came yesterday to aerate the yard I wondered if he thought he was being replaced so I sent him a text last night telling him the story behind a partially cut lawn and no he wasn't being replaced.
This morning Barbers has an unusual FB post explaining they are an orchard and when a particular kind of apple is gone, it is gone for the year. When I was there Wednesday, a lady who obviously was a tourist, had a melt down in the middle of the store when she heard they were all out of honey crisp apples. It was kind of embarrassing to watch and she ended her apple tirade with this statement, "I'll just go to Costco and get honey crisp apples, they keep a good supply." Anyone who has ever eaten apples straight out of the orchard knows that processed and waxed honey crisps from Costco, while tasty, aren't as good as an orchards. She yelled this like some kind of threat so that someone would go to the back and say, okay, we were holding out on you. I did learn this morning though, the ever crisp apple is not another name for a candy crisp apple...and candy crisps are one of the three remaining types of apples to be picked. When they post candy crisp, you can bet I'll be out the door. Either their crops didn't produce a huge yield this year or more likely in a pandemic state of mind people are buying more apples than other years. The honey crisps went quickly.
Love these days, these beginning days of crisp, of flannel, of jeans, of apples and boot. There is a sadness though as produce stand season winds down.
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