Roasting Marshmellows

So one of the cool things about our house is that we have a little fire pit in the back yard. It's more like a circle of rocks and not so much a pit, but that didn't stop us from making a fire last night and roasting some marshmellows and making s'mores. I had some scrap wood in the basement and there were some other logs already out there, and before too long, we had a nice fire going.

Then the roasting sticks came out and the marshmellows went in the fire. Yummy! It was chilly last night, but the fire was keeping us warm. What a great way to wind down a weekend. It's the first fire we've had, and we kicked around the idea of having a fire in the winter time - making some hot chocolate and sitting around in the falling snow with a nice fire going!

Earlier, we had a great dinner, with lots of fresh greens from the small garden I planted right after we moved in. I can't believe it worked (that things actually grew), but it did. We have cilantro, dill, green beans, lettuce, mustard greens, arugala, and fennel. The green beans aren't big, but they're big enough to eat and that's what we did!

So one thing I haven't mentioned is the pigeon problem we've been having. The previous owners were clear about the bird problem, and they even listed it in the seller's disclosure statement, but not having had problems with pigeons before, I didn't really get it. Now I do. Pigeons are disgusting and sort of like flying rats. They have some favortie hang outs on our roof, mostly under the eves, where they like to perch and poop and make noise. Mostly they just poop. And it is disgusting. So I've done some research and it seems like pigeon spikes work pretty well, so I've bit the bullet and ordered some of them. I'll try to place them in some strategic places, to lesson the pigeon impact, but I doubt we'll get rid of them. I wonder where they go in the winter?

Fall is Here

I don't have any pictures, but because it was a dry summer, many of the trees are bursting into yellows and oranges and reds and it's gorgeous. It's also cold and wet. I'm waiting for that last burst of summer. We'll see if we get it. I'm not ready to bundle up for winter just quite yet. After a busy first two months, it's all caught up with me. I've come down with some sort of cold, so I'm home from work early, catching up with the blog, although I'm so far behind, it's almost impossible to catch up.

One highlight that I do want to mention is that this last weekend Huston Smith came to Unity Church for a Morgan Forum (on Saturday) and to preach on Sunday. Juliana and I were lucky enough to have dinner with him on Saturday night and it was remarkable. He's quite hard of hearing and he was tired because he had been lecturing all day, but he still had a sparkle in his eye. We talked a bit before dinner, and he told us he was excited to get home because he couldn't wait to celebrate his 62 wedding anniversary with his wife (he was in St. Paul for the actual day and he was going to celebrate when he when he returned Sunday night.) Anyway, after sharing a few stories, Huston told us about a street person he befriended in Berkeley, Cal. He would sing a song to him and then give him a dollar and then other times, this fellow would sing to Huston, and then Huston would give him a dollar. They swapped songs with each other. Anyway, this started us off, and we sang songs together all through dinner - spirituals, hymns, you name it, we sung it! Then we sang him off to bed...it was a magical, unexpected moment, a moment of grace perhaps.

I've been doing some work around the house, too, which has been rewarding. I've also learned that some projects aren't as easy as I think they'll be! I wanted to replace the stairs leading down to the basement, and even board some wood to do so, but messing with stairs is way more work than I realized, so I ended up just repainting them and putting new treads on them. I'll post some more photos later on, but right now I gotta run.