Eulalia!

Through some good fortune, our local indy bookstore was able to snag Brian Jacques on his U.S. tour to promote Eulalia, his latest book in the Redwall series. Typically he does much bigger venues, but he agreed to appear before an audience of 120, the capacity of the public library. He is as wonderful a storyteller in person as he is in print, so the evening went very quickly. Moral of his appearance, as well as his books: Good will always win out over evil. Let's hope that's not fiction.

The author performing the description of Cluny from Chapter 2 of Redwall

G & her friend Chloe waiting in line to get their books signed

G meeting Brian Jacques

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Chuckin'

A few stills for those of you who can't get the video to load:

Loading a pumpkin

G tries her hand

Makes Me Wanna Hurl

With blood, sweat and tears, the trebuchet has been resurrected and rendered functional.

Late Bloomer

Double hollyhock

Silhouette

Hanging Out

A better place to do it than the mall ...

G and her friend Em with Starlight, Eadie, Crescent, Clover and Honeysuckle

Don't Let the Rain Come Down

Ah, the romance of living in a 100-plus-year-old farmhouse!

Point of egress, directly over our bed, for the rain water coming in through the leak in our roof. Forecast calls for rain on and off for the next few days. Let's hope Jesus the Roofer answers his voicemail.(OK, actually his name is Jim, but he looks like Jesus, if He had driven a pickup and traveled to job sites with His Boxer instead of His Disciples ...)

How You Fix a Broken Jack-o-Lantern

With a Pumpkin Patch, of course!

Long, busy day. Huge pumpkin day. Lots of big groups, people who've come here year after year. Thank goodness pumpkin season falls during autumn, when it is dark by 6:30!

Here's what it looks like if you take a hayride with Dan. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) you miss all the pumpkin humor when you're not right here ...

Farmers' Market

Dan & G spent another Saturday morning at a local farmers' market. Amazingly enough, they came home with an almost-empty flatbed. Or maybe not, since a friend told us that a stand in town is selling pumpkins for $20-$40! Since none of ours are more than $5, I guess that's why they could unload them so fast.

G with the flatbed of produce

Dan chatting up a family friend