It’s been a while since I last posted, but, fortunately, not much has been going on. Leah is still having pain issues. I am still here. The dogs are still here. And one cat is still here.

Fall has fallen here. We have had lows in the lower 30’s. Thursday morning it was 39F, a little warmer than the previous night. One of the people I see on my dog walks stopped Thursday morning and told me they had 29F and lots of frost in the valley. Leah still hasn’t quite internalized the temperature workings of a mountain top. It seems counterintuitive, but on the coldest, stillest, clearest nights, it’s not unusual for us to have lows 10F higher than at the base of the mountain.

I have been semi-busy trying to get firewood for colder weather. I was afraid we were going to fall short, but it looks like maybe we won’t. A large hardwood that smells like an oak fell last year down the hill from the house, and has been seasoning in place ever since. I took my old Mule — the Kawasaki type rather than the four-legged type — down to cut some wood. It’s a rough ride down, and a somewhat concerning turnaround because of the slope. Here the Mule is, waiting patiently for me to cut and split some wood.

The photo is a little misleading, because the slope of the hill is not really obvious, but I was pointing the phone camera pretty much level, so, aimed below the Mule. The slope is steep enough that it’s kind of hard to walk on.

There is a stump just below the left rear wheel of the Mule. That was a standing dead tree I cut on Wednesday. The top of the tree got caught in a fork of a nice-size green tree and wouldn’t let the dead tree fall any further. I had to cut the green tree, which I don’t like to do, to get the dead one down. They both resisted, but I managed to get both on the ground. Unfortunately the standing tree had been dead for a while, and was pretty rotten in the middle. The tree I was originally working on has also been dead for a while, but most of its soft, punky wood in in about the outer inch, leaving some nice, hard wood on the inside.

That kind of wood makes me think of my brother, who would have loved to get some of it for his shop.

Here is our current hardwood supply in one of our firewood racks.

It’s nearly half full. There is an empty rack the same size behind it, and a third rack almost filled with pine as well. I don’t like to burn pine, but I was afraid that’s all we would have, so I got some.

I’ll get more Friday, when this should post. Eventually I think I will have to make a new rack for the hardwood, but that’s a problem for another day, one when I actually have a truck to haul material.

I couldn’t get firewood without the Mule. It’s 13 years old, and has done a lot of hard work. It wouldn’t run last summer. I replaced the carburetor twice before I discovered a leaky fuel line coming out of the gas tank. Now it looks pretty rough, but it runs well. I wouldn’t buy a 13-year-old UTV like the Mule, and I wouldn’t sell it either.

But about that Fall. We have several patches of morning glories around the yard, slowly fading away. They’re a messy plant, but I leave them because I like them. Unfortunately, ours don’t have much in the way of blooms. Here is one by the driveway.

That’s my finger pointing at the flower. It probably looks impressive to an ant. And here is one down across the corner from our lot.

Why don’t these grow in our yard?

Speaking of yards, our front yard has been mowed only once this summer. I chose to plant zoysia specifically because it looks good unmowed. It’s deep, probably eight inches at least. Sam is up to his knees in it. Zoe finds it comfortable for a quick nap.

The grass is actually greener than it looks here, but it’s on its way to brown. Once it’s fully browned, I’ll mow it short so next year’s grass won’t have to fight its way up.

And, finally, it’s stinkbug season here. They light on sunny surfaces and window screens, and sometimes they come inside. They are not particularly troublesome, but they are a pest. I was glad to see this on Thursday night.

It’s a granddaddy longlegs eating a stink bug in our garage. Granddad’s body is the short oval on top, and the defunct stinkbug is the longer, horizontal oval on the bottom. I didn’t know granddaddy longlegs preyed on stinkbugs, but now that I do, I’ll be especially careful of them.

And that’s the news from Lavender Mountain.