Fall is here. It came to us the week before Halloween with a freakishly early ice storm for our southwestern part of the US. We have 9 pecan trees, 4 hackberries and 2 unidentifiable trees on our property. All of the trees except the unknown ones are over 77 years old. We know his because we lost 2 hackberries earlier this year and got to count their rings.
Anyway, all the leaves were still green in all the trees blowing in the Indian summer breezes we were having when the ice slammed into us for 3 days. Most people lost power for days. The schools didn’t have power. The trees groaned under the weight of their frozen leaves, coated with layer after layer of the rain that froze to them. All was dark and all was quiet on our street for days. We did have power most if the time, but it went off and on so often we gave up setting our electric clocks.
Oh, wait. It was not quiet. About every 5 minutes you could hear trees creaking, breaking, dropping huge branches, or giving up completely. It was very erie. We quit jumping up to look out the windows when our yard was so covered in branches you couldn’t tell where the new ones had dropped! Every tree lost limbs. Two of our beautiful pecans that shade the road lost their branches that grow over the street. They were may favorite, making a sort if tree tunnel.
We have spent days and days cutting the branches and moving them to the side if the road for the tree trucks to pick up. Its just awful. Poor trees. I know most of them so well. Now they are different, smaller, damaged or lost. We lost another hackberry. We lost one of the unidentifiable trees by our fire pit. We have run out of room to stack limbs and we live on a corner lot! We are now planning to stack behind the stacks and just move them forward as the city clears them. We will have plenty of firewood for our meat smoker! Oh how I wish our chimneys worked!
Other than stacking tree branches for hours on end the fall baking kicked off to a good start. I’ve been experimenting with my heirloom gingerbread recipe and I think I have made it even better! I’m going to do one more bake to make sure before I post the recipe. The flavor is much stronger and better!
I’ve been seriously thinking about getting another vintage range-a tiny apartment-sized O’Keefe & Merrit, so I will have a second oven when I need one (which is rare) and to decorate. Its weird, I know! I’m gas “pipe dreaming!” It is so hard to find a double oven model in my neck of the woods. Plus these tiny stoves are sooo cute!
I don’t know who this lady is, but it’s my goal to look like her when I’m a grandma. I’m choosing not to dye my hair and have embraced my streaks of grey!
This is our new kitten! Her name is Spooky. I think she is terribly cute. She loves biting banana stems and watching Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple on the TV! Lately she has totally attached herself to my hubby. He’s working from home and they are buddies. My heart melts when she sleeps under his beard at night! Spooky has orange eyes and we adopted her because our neighbors moved and took their cat with them. We loved their cat, so we decided to add to our family! We don’t plan on getting any more animals until our older ones pass on. For now she’s keeping us all young at heart!
Thanksgiving will be here soon. We are getting all hunkered down readying for winter and whatever 2021 brings. Whatever happens we are choosing to make our house a home for our family and believing God is watching over us. May you have a peaceful fall with lots if family, friends, and a hygge home. From our house on Kansas Street to Yours,
-Jaime
P.S. This is my 100th post here!
Life on Kansas Street 