The Coffee House

cgw · Sep 28, 2025

smoke665 said:
Where is everyone? No posts since Thursday?

Fall has started here, cool mornings and only moderately warm days. My kind of perfect weather actually. Thanks to a drought our leaves are turning from green to brown and falling. Looks like a drab fall for us.

Our hummingbirds are mostly gone, still get an occasional stragglers. The downside of fall is the %$^& spiders go crazy spinning webs everywhere. Morning walks with Phoebe look like I'm some sort of crazy contorsionist as I dance around pulling webs from my face.

Finally the deer seem to be more active foraging. This morning just after daylight, took Phoebe out, as I stood there waiting, turned my head to see a large doe staring at me not more than 100 ft away. After several minutes she calmly walk away, Phoebe never even noticed her.

Easing into fall in S. Ontario. Blazing early maples but lots of drought stress leaf falls. No lawn mowing! Bulb planting with anti-squirrel protection. Keep thinking tiny, lethal IEDs but I'm advised three in line are waiting for the victim's spot. Jeesh, getting ready for approaching snowblower tune-ups--plugs, shear pins, oil and grease, spare belts. No fun fixing these babies in January!

smoke665 · Sep 28, 2025

@cgw We follow the God rule on snow removal in the south. What he puts down, he takes away

cgw · Sep 28, 2025

smoke665 said:
@cgw We follow the God rule on snow removal in the south. What he puts down, he takes away

Problem here is He doesn't get around to it till April!

jeffashman · Sep 28, 2025

Hiya! I've been slammed both at work and with allergies the past few weeks. Cooler weather is on its way, but very slowly. Still in the planning stage for the back yard, but I have a little time before it gets too cold to work out there... water freezes at 50F in Texas don't ya know... I need to order some more dwarf white clover seed. Still trying to decide how to make my own deck and pergola/arbor place. It was a wonderful 66F when I first went out to mow, but it is now 82F and climbing, with high humidity.

cgw · Sep 28, 2025

jeffashman said:
Hiya! I've been slammed both at work and with allergies the past few weeks. Cooler weather is on its way, but very slowly. Still in the planning stage for the back yard, but I have a little time before it gets too cold to work out there... water freezes at 50F in Texas don't ya know... I need to order some more dwarf white clover seed. Still trying to decide how to make my own deck and pergola/arbor place. It was a wonderful 66F when I first went out to mow, but it is now 82F and climbing, with high humidity.

Bottle some and send it up here in December--assuming our nation-wide mail strike gets settled by then!

smoke665 · Sep 29, 2025

Anyone else see this on your local news stations, been on ours recently. Apparently doppler radar is showing the migration of large flocks of birds. Kinda cool.

nerwin · Sep 29, 2025

I been busy taking advantage of the warm weather trend lately here. Certainly doesn't feel like fall, more like summer but I am using it to get some projects done. Fall is a great time for doing landscaping as I can make a little bit of mess now and spring seed it and it will be good to go for mowing.

I had an island of bushes that I always mowed around. Bunch of saplings started growing and overall it would look better without. It definitely opened up my backyard more.

snowbear · Sep 29, 2025

smoke665 said:
Anyone else see this on your local news stations, been on ours recently. Apparently doppler radar is showing the migration of large flocks of birds. Kinda cool.
View attachment 290686

I recently saw a science-type show where a mass of cicadas were seen on RADAR. I don't recall which show.

Rickbb · Sep 29, 2025

smoke665 said:
@cgw We follow the God rule on snow removal in the south. What he puts down, he takes away

And we close schools for a week, but not work, so parents are pulling their hair out after 1/2 day of wet snow clothes.

jeffashman · Sep 29, 2025

Autumn is officially here, I guess. Woke up to the heater going, and later in the day the AC came on. From 60F in the AM to 84F in the afternoon.

smoke665 · Sep 30, 2025

The next 10 days for us show sunny sky's with daytime highs in the low 80's and nighttime lows in the low 50s. It's the time of year when you flip the thermostat back and forth from heat to air.

snowbear · Sep 30, 2025

In the Maryland spot, we are in mid to upper 70s this week, though the next few days will be cooler. Next week brings rain, just in time for MLW and Lazy Lobster's drive down for MLSIL's surgery. Maine is having Aurora Borealis activity lately.

Our basement is divided into two areas: the original house and the back extension. It's easy to tell becasue of the stacked stone wall between the two. The original side is the utility any storage area: electric panel, furnace, hot water heater, washer and dryer. I have placed a shelving unit on one wall and have another to put there.

The newer side is divided into two main rooms and a wide hallway, about 10' wide and runningthe entire length of thebasemet. One of the rooms is being set up as my workshop. I will eventually extended it to cross the hallway. The other is my office/art studio/hobby room. I want to put a mural on the wall where my drawing desk is, but since I will eventually refinish the basement I am going to paint either canvas or wood panels. The idea for the subject changes daily, from a large 1901 flag (star and pine tree) to a map of the state. The latest idea is a landscape featuring our pond and a Great Blue Heron or Egrets.

nerwin · Sep 30, 2025

Took advantage of the nice weather yesterday. It was 80f and I wanted to clear some more brush to make way for some new stuff I wanna plant here. Figured I'd make a video, its a little long though. But some people enjoy watching these videos, I added no music this time.