Well, the time has come. I have to do some cleaning. The little pumpkins must go – goodbye. The porch must be cleaned and everything stored away for the winter. I’d like to blame it on the relatively warm temperatures; I have never waited this long to tackle the job. I wrote about it last year – I think there is a part of me that thinks if I leave all the pots and cushions and hanging plants on the porch, I can stop the oncoming cold and snow. Never mind that the plants in the pots have been dead since that first hard frost or that the hanging plants look pathetic and forlorn. I try to deny that my beloved summer is gone for this year. I put my blinders on until I am shamed into packing it all up. I was going to do it the other day, but my excuse was that it was “too windy.” Yesterday I was “too tired.” Today, I will do it. Hopefully.

Husband and I have to deal with the moss on our roof, too. This is a job we really dislike. Don has to get up on the roof and spray it with a bleach and water mixture. Then we wait a while and loosen it with a brush, eventually hosing the whole shebang off the roof. The moss is tenacious, however, so we do the best we can. Our trees are wonderful, but they do shade portions of the roof and it has been so rainy here this year that the moss is worse than ever. Every time I am ready to force husband out the door and start this task, the weather gets crazy and we have to postpone it.

I had to add this photo of one of our neighbors’ cats:

I shot this through our kitchen window. I haven’t seen the cats in a long while and suddenly I see them all the time. They are descendants of the cats that used to live in MHC when the ‘Cat Lady’ lived here. All the older residents of the town know who she was. Let’s just say that she loved cats and had many of them. When she died, the house was sold and it had to be taken down to the studs so that it might be ‘refreshed.’ If you know what I mean.

Have a great Friday!