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A beautiful autumn day

October 21st, 2012 at 09:28 pm

There's a lot of color now in the foliage. My dogwoods are a rich red-and-orange and here and there are brilliants shots of yellow in the summersweet shrub while the burning bush, Japanese maples and autumn joy sedums are varying shades of magenta and burgundy.

To make sure that I follow through and do it, I have put a hike at Huntington State Park on my lists of Things to Do. Of course I'll bring the camera. We'll have a high of 65 tomorrow and it will be sunny, so it should be nice.

I've gotten a lot done this weekend.

For one, I am well ahead of schedule in editing the business ethics book and have already finished the first half (50 pages). Before I send him the edited version, I want to read through a version with my edits incorporated, just to catch the occasional thing I may have missed.

I already let him know I'd be sending it to him earlier than planned, and he said the magic words: "Great, let me know when to send the next check!" Ka ching. Smile

I'm also simultaneously editing The Author's second novel. She, too, has promised me another $100 this week, so we'll see if that happens. I'm about halfway through the 300-odd page paranormal romance.

I'm finding that I am constantly checking various rules of hyphenation or punctuation. It's difficult to remember everything. So the editing process is a great learning experience for me; I never actually took a college course on English that I can remember, aside from literature courses where you're reading, not writing. I would love to take a primer somewhere.

I finished mowing the front today and then mowed the back lawn as well, mulching the many fallen leaves as I went.

I also installed a pole-mounted bird feeder in a new location in the front yard. I was spurred to do so by the fact that between me and the cats, roughly 20 mice have been caught in the house, and it's only October! I have long had a triple tube feeder hanging from a dogwood in the backyard, and it is quite close to the house, and it has occurred to me that perhaps the availability of all that food (the sunflower seeds) was making it all seem a little too inviting to rodents that might want to take up residence.

I have not caught a mouse since stuffing steel wool underneath the vinyl siding, but I have not finished doing so all around the house, so I won't be surprised if I get more. Still, I am very hopeful that this could substantially reduce my indoor mouse population. I check the trap every day.

The new feeder is perfectly positioned to be viewed, with or without binoculars, from my upstairs office window, and instead of being about six feet from the house, it's maybe about 35 feet away.

I must say, the birds have been going nuts since they discovered it there. A large assortment of tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, (female) rose-breasted grosbeaks, goldfinches, downy and hairy woodpeckers, pine siskins and cardinals have been making steady progress on the seed and suet. I had gone to the trouble of purchasing a $20 squirrel baffle for the pole, but evidently, the squirrels are finding ample dropped seed on the ground so they haven't tried to shinny up the pole...yet.

For breakfast this morning I enjoyed a large bowl of steel-cut oatmeal with blue agave syrup, wineberries I picked last summer, walnuts and almond milk.

Lunch was more homemade chili, which turned out quite good this time.

I vaccuumed the downstairs yesterday; it really needed it.

I am thrilled to be saving substantial money on heat. I turned on the heat for the season around October 6, but while it kicked on for a few nights in a row (and we did have a few frosts), I've been able to turn the system off again as the past week or so has been warmer than usual for this time of year.

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