lapful of wool

It's fall here. Honestly fall. Last night we lit the woodstove for the first time in ages. Really lit it. Not just, for a few hours lit it, but lit it for the night, loading as much wood in as we can to keep it going for the night. This morning the air in the village smelled like woodsmoke and cold. By afternoon it will be warm enough for short sleeved shirts again but right now it's scarves and socks and the fire.

The leaves are turning fast. Up close they still look green but if you look over the hills at a distance you can see they have a yellow and red wash to them. This weekend is the harvest dinner. Apple cider and squash casseroles and mismatched tablecloths and the sun setting behind the mountains. Last year we didn't bring sweaters with us. It was so cold, but too much fun to leave. This year the car will be full of extra sweaters and socks and boots and coats and jugs to bring home extra apple cider in.

Evelyn's sweater, her Christmas sweater, is underway. I love knitting sweaters for her because they fly off the needles. Fast knitting, but still substantial knitting. This year she is getting owlet. I've been wanting to knit it for so long, I kind of want to knit one for myself, in fact. Maybe if I ever get all my alpaca spun up... But not till after Christmas, too much knitting to do for others until then.

Last night was my favorite kind of night. Fire, music, a book - not sure if it's a good book yet or not, but still - and knitting in my lap to keep me warm.

out my window

Last week, while hunting for an errant chicken lost in the woods (I didn't find her but she came back two days later, I kind of wonder what she was doing to stay alive out there) I came across one red leaf, laying in the middle of the path by the fairy house. A fall leaf.

Here and there, as we drive from the house to the village and back again, there are signs that fall is coming. At first I thought we had some sick trees around here, that the cool summer and copious rain had fool them somehow. But that only held up when it was just a tree or two. It is daily becoming evident that fall is coming up fast as more and more trees shift from summer green to early fall greeny gold or even red. Last night I sat in our room watching the sun going down over the tree tops and realized that the big beech tree out our window is dappled yellow and green now. If I let my eyes loose focus it all looks green, still summer, but if I really look, I see fall.

In the evenings we pull on sweaters or head upstairs early where it's always a little warmer and yesterday Evelyn wore tights. She was peeling them off by lunchtime, of course, but in the morning, and then again after dinner, there they were. Tights. Sweaters. Hot cups of tea. I love fall. I'm a little surprised at it's early appearence this year, and a little nervous that all those things that need to be done before the real cold comes are no where near done, but still, it's (almost) fall. So I can't complain.

on a mountain

An evening hike. A "picnic hike" Evelyn called it. Up to Lincoln Gap and onto the Long Trail until we found Sunset Rock. I'm not sure you could find a nicer view. Blissful. Although next time I'll pack the food in a backpack instead of a basket. It'll be easier to handle the steep parts with two hands.

day trip: fort ticondaroga

The lovely thing about having the grandparents come for a visit, aside from the fact that it's just nice to have my parents around for a good long stay, is that it give us an excuse to do a little bit of touristing. We're not really the type to shy away from playing the tourist in our own town (or state) but it's easy to think "oh we'll do that next summer. Today we'll paint a wall." Will and I have been meaning to take the kids to Fort Ticonderoga since we drove past it with out moving van but we've never managed to do it. So it's a good thing the grandparents are in town to make us go at last.

We took the slightly longer way there. Through rolling farm land and over one of the oldest (maybe the oldest) ferry crossings in the US to the fort. A long, hot (for here) afternoon in the sun of exploring and sitting on cannons and gazing out at the lake and watching soldiers march and fire and sew their own period perfect clothing.

My family went on a lot of these kind of excursions when I was a kid. Living history museums, old forts and villages. They kind of all blend into one long summer vacation in my mind and were, I'm absolutely sure, key in making me a history nut. Something I hope to pass on to my kids, who, with only slight bribing of a creemee at the end, explored right along with us and asked very good questions. Like, "Were there bathrooms or did they just pee off the wall?" (of course, what else would a ten year old boy ask?)

small town fun

Last night, with a baked-from-our-chicken's-eggs (!) quiche in hand and Evelyn dressed to the nines (the rest of us went with normal weekend wear) we took ourselves down to the town hall for a potluck dinner, concert and square dance. For a village so small you might miss it if you blinked, we have an amazing range of talented musicians. Honest to goodness opera singers, people who gave up Carnegie Hall to come live in the woods. A local music series that is packed with mindblowingly great performers. Did I tell you about the time Marie Von Trapp's granddaughter led us in singing Edelweiss? Yes, really.

This time it was Red Tail Ring. Who are not local but are related to (also amazing musically talented) locals. I'm not a big country music girl but I love bluegrass and that kind of 1930's music that filled the movie "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou." And this was that kind of music. Toe tappingly fun.

No one takes themselves too seriously around here. There was, and I'm not joking, a brain shaped jello on offer at the potluck. So no big poofy skirts (other than Evie) and no real professionals. The caller talked us all through each dance before we started and I'm sure we looked less than graceful, but oh was it fun. Briton was asked to dance by a high school girl (thank goodness for sweet high school girls!) which was the highlight of his weekend, not that he would admit it. And Evie pretty much never sat down, whirling and spinning and laughing, right in her element. We danced on the old sprung floor where they used to hold town meetings, surrounded by faded sepia photos of the town long ago and spindley wooden benches and less pretty yellow plastic chairs and I couldn't help but think Yes. This is why I love this place.

green green mountains

It happened all of a sudden. For so long it's been everything but green. Reds and yellows and ambers in fall. And then the brown of stick season and the white of winter. And the yuck of mud. It felt like the green would never come back and then one weekend, it was. Green, green as far as you can see. Every drive is breathtaking. Every view is beautiful. Zipping down the highway puts me in awe, once again, that I get to live here. Green is my favorite color and this week I have been remembering how enchanted I was with all it's shade when we first moved here. It hasn't worn off. In fact, I think it's only gotten worse.

lake days

We spent the evening at the lake, for the first time since early fall. Hauling fishing poles and knitting baskets and digging buckets and blankets and dinner down to the shore. It's funny, its such a small lake, almost a big pond really. If we wanted we could drive to Lake Champlain or the Green Mountain Reservoir, bigger, fancier lakes. But we don't, at least not often. We come here. To this little lake we love.

Briton, who has a hard time sitting still for much of anything, can fish for hours, standing silently on the edge of the water, watching his bobber for the slightest twitch. He and Will wander down the paths, through the tall grass, to the quite spots they know the fish like. I sit on the bank, knitting, reading, watching the ducks and geese and hawks. Evelyn traipses back and forth between. Fishing for a moment, and then back to the beachy edge to look for tadpoles. Last night she discovered a rock just a few feet into the water, just the right size for her feet and nothing else. It wasn't there last summer. It might not be there next week. Who knows. She waded out to it ans stood there, watching the waves, dancing, singing her new favorite song - "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" It looked a little like she was standing on water. My little nymph.

For a long time we were the only ones there, which is my favorite way to find our lake. Quiet and still. The kids like it when there is a crowd. Dogs and kids and canoes and people. But I love it when it's just us. It feels like the most beautiful place in the world. The lake. The sky. The tress. The four of us.

barren

I think this is the first week since we moved to Vermont where I've looked out and not admired the landscape around me. This week, unlike the nearly year of weeks before, it is not particularly beautiful. We started with a thaw and mud and perpetually having streaks of dirt on the back of our pant where our legs hit the edge of the (very dirty) car while climbing in and out and now are in the midst of another cold snap. The sap is frozen in the buckets. The mud has turned to icy ruts. The kids are back in snowsuits. The wind whips the trees around and stings out cheeks when we go outside for another armload of logs from the dwindling pile.

I was listening to a local poet on the radio yesterday talking about April being a month of hope. But not hope in the "spring is here" kind of way. More of a hope that spring will eventually be here. Of patience that if we wait a little while longer, there will be flowers and buds on the trees and warm days. I know it will come. We were here for it last year. Gloriously balmy days, hydrangias blooming all over town, kids leaping wildly off the big rock and plunging into the river. It will come. I keep telling myself it will come.

And then I put another log on the fire. Because it's not here yet. Burrrr....

after the rain

We took a drive the first chance we got, after the rain (and it did rain and rain). The long way around between the two villages. Up past the barns. A long loop through the fields.

This weekend is our first soccer free one since August. Bliss (not that I don't love watching my kids play soccer but oh, to have a Saturday that does not require being somewhere early, it seems almost like we're playing hookey.

So instead we'll sleep in (hahahaha, not really) and read by the fire and play games and rake leaves and put back everything we took down for the Hurricane. Which all sounds...ahhh, nice.

Wishing you a lovely, restful weekend out there.