Light In The Morning

Welcome Home, Claire

6:47

7:27

It rained quite a bit last night but this morning, there's some clear skies and it looks like today should be sunny, high of 52º.  The lake, calm and smooth, looks inviting, tempting me to jump in my kayak and paddle but I am too lazy, have yoga at 10:00.  Maybe later today, after lunch if the wind cooperates.

Yesterday was another fine day, some clouds, some sun, moderate temperatures, in other words, a fall like day.  I went to yoga like a good boy and to my delight, there were five of us, as Courtney's class, usually just two of us, seems to be catching on.  All it takes is for some of the regulars to try her class and they will like it.  One of the new students asked me if I write a blog.  Somehow she had discovered it,  put together that the blogger lived on the lake, kayaked with his wife and went to yoga at Eight Limbs.   Interesting.  After class, I stopped at Wegman's, again, to pick up some sorbet for Evie and pick up romaine but they were out of it.  How can you be out of romaine on Senior Citizen Tuesday?

When I got home, Evie was surprisingly chipper and energetic after her dental work on Monday and asked me to get the lawn mower ready in case she felt like cutting the lawns.  We had a lunch of soup, two kinds, and I also had my black bean stew over rice, with salsa, tasty and filling.  We watched Jon Stewart then relaxed.

Lake Erie, Barcelona Beach

Mouth of Chautauqua Creek

Trout Fishing In Chautauqua

Around 2:00, I decided to do what I thought I might do when I got up...drive to Barcelona and walk along the shores of Lake Erie.  It was a great day, an amazing sky, lots of threatening clouds though no rain, windy but not uncomfortable, and I was one of two or three people on the beach. I walked down as far at Chautauqua Creek, watched a fisherman pull a large trout out of the creek, then walked back to my car.  O, yea, I also picked up three buckets of flat rocks, for what reason I am not sure, either to start a rain garden under our gutters, or fill in low spots around the cairns as we enter our yard.  For now, they are sitting in the garage.  I was surprised to see Jake's was still open.  If I knew it, I would have had lunch there.  They will be open until the 15th of November.  After walking the beach, I took the long way home, down # 5, then south to #20, to the Noble Winery and Studio Panterra on Hardscrabble Road, then back to Mayville, where I picked up some romaine, cheese and rye flour, all on sale.

Vineyards in The Fall

When I got home, to my utter disbelief, Evie was finishing up both mulching and raking both Leonards and our yards.  They both looked like golf courses, leafless and green, and we will probably not have to cut them again.  I gathered up a couple of piles of leaves, then took them up to the leaf pile at the top of our road.  It's a good feeling to have the yard and garden ready for winter, making spring much easier.

We relaxed with a glass of wine before dinner, as it was already dark at 5:00.  For dinner, we had leftovers, for me chicken and rice, for Evie soup and she made up some cheesy cauliflower with the cauliflower left over from Sunday's dinner.  We had mango sorbet for dessert as we watched Colbert and two episodes of the FX series Fargo, which we missed when it was on TV last year.  It's gotten great reviews, a take off on the Coen brothers great film Fargo.  It's hard to describe, as the main character, Billy Bob Thornton, is a psychopath, and like the other characters, they remind us of the characters in the movie.  An interesting and effective device.  Despite the violence, we will keep watching because of its Coen like black humor, made more fun because of the Minnesotan dialects of the main characters.

We did not watch much of the election results as we are way out of step with most Americans.   Their delight in the Republican resurgence parallels our dismay.  PBS political commentator Mark Shields explains most election results the best: WHEN MONEY SPEAKS, BOTH THE PEOPLE AND THE TRUTH ARE SILENT.