Fall is here!

Today was a tried and true rainy, cool, fall day!  We closed the high window in the front room and I even felt half tempted to get the wood stove going. All the sweet potatoes and peanuts have been dug and Jason is getting in cover crops at every available opportunity and many are already sprouting thanks to the recent rains.  I'm enjoying helping to "tuck in" the gardens for winter, chopping up the dead vines and allowing them to compost in place.  There are still some peppers hanging on, hull peas, spinach, and lettuce in abundance! 

Kitchen garden with a few sugar snaps and plenty of hot peppers to go around!

Main garden with a bed full of lettuce and carrots near the top.

Cutting down the cornstalks which will hopefully be chipped up for cover material for the composting toilet (if they ever can dry out!)

Digging sweet potatoes - not quite like last year but two large baskets of delicious looking food!

And a little mess of peanuts to enjoy (or probably mostly for next year's seed so we can expand our planting!)

So since the gardening has slowed down, why not tackle some of the big things that have been looming...like buy a car!  Yes, we finally went for it - we are now the owners (though it is not yet on the Tangly Woods homestead) of a Toyota Matrix.  Since I have never seen it, it's not quite feeling like a reality yet.  Jason and the girls drove all the way to Manassas yesterday to take a look at what looked like a pretty ideal vehicle for us (at least on the screen).  What a taxing day for all of us - actually the girls seemed to fair much better than their parents.  Hopefully our decision to "go for it" wasn't too swayed by our sheer exhaustion in the process.  It checked out well and should meet our vehicle needs for the foreseeable future, we just both just wish we didn't need a car at all!

It feels a little crazy to me that our car only cost about double what we recently spent on my one dental implant.  But I better not write too much about that experience as I'm working to come to peace with the whole thing.  It's "over" (it was nearly a year-long process) but I'm not happy with it and really wish I had never gone this route.  So I guess if we are to live and learn, I'll have this experience to refer back to when my other baby tooth with no adult tooth underneath decides its time in my mouth has come to an end.  I'm rooting (no pun intended) for it to hang in there a few more decades.

On to more brighter topics - our kiddos!  I'm not sure either of them fully recognize how good they have it, but Alida definitely can't possibly know what a grand big sister she has.  Kali is so sweet with her and has been taking more and more interest in caring for Alida.  She's been taking Alida on nappy walks on days when Jason is home with them - and Kali is the only one out of the three of us that has never failed to get Alida down for a nap.  Well, the other night they cuddled up in Kali's bed.  Here they are:



Minutes later I heard Kali stop reading.  I peaked into the room and Kali was quietly closing the book.  Here's what I saw:



Alida has her own little nurturing bug these days too.  Today she wanted to bring Big Bear downstairs to play with.  Before long she was pretending to put a diaper on him.  Then she needed to take him potty.   When I walked into the bathroom, I couldn't help but chuckle.  This is the scene I came upon.

Now speaking of kiddos, their bath water is probably cool by now, so I had better go help them finish up...