Winter came early!

This is what we awoke to yesterday!  The bitter cold blew in on Friday and we are not supposed to climb out of the forties all week.  And more snow is predicted for Tuesday.  Hooray for our year-old heater!!!!

I had purchased spring bulbs almost six weeks ago but I just never made time to get them in the ground.  But, I knew the cold front was coming, and the temperatures ahead of it were unseasonably warm so I spent all Thursday morning pulling up my many dead zinnias and planting the 112 bulbs (45 daffodils, 45 tulips, 10 hyacinth, 12 crocus).  I put half of the daffodils in back to enhance the daffodil plantings I already have and I put everything else in front along with 18 viola plants.  I am trying to imitate the temple grounds plantings and that is what they do every spring and it looks amazing.  Below is the cleared out zinnia bed and the piles of dead stalks waiting for room in the yard waste dumpsters.  This time of year, those dumpsters get full pretty quickly as everyone is clearing out deat plants and leaves.

On Monday, when temperatures were more autumn-like, Steve, Beckie and I had a little adventure.  We visited the Missouri-Mississippi confluence north of the city and then we crossed into Illinois at Alton and took the river road about twelve miles up to Grafton.  Lighthouses along the way and in Grafton where we enjoyed a delicious picnic lunch packed by Beckie.  We road the skylift to at Grafton's Aerie resort and enjoyed the view.  It was a lovely time.  Emily and family were supposed to have joined us but they got hit by a bug over the weekend and most were down for the count.  

Below are Steve, Beckie and me where the two rivers actually meet.

Below is the Missouri on the left and the Mississippi on the right

Tuesday at orchestra, we had our new conductor who will be doing the December concert (remember we are having four conducting candidates this year as we search for a permanent one going forward).  This guy, TJ Abernathy, is young but I like him, so far.  

Steve has started taking Ozempic since he started seeing an endocrinologist in late September.  At first, we really couldn't see any difference in taking that EXPENSIVE drug.  But, in the last couple of weeks, things have changed and Steve has had to increasingly lower his insulin doses to prevent having low blood sugars. He has been in fairly constant contact with the nurses both with the doctor and with United Healthcare as he continues to have low blood sugars.  So, I guess the Ozempic IS working.  And it is good to be able to reduce the high levels of insulin that Steve had been taking. 

I had a music studio recital on Saturday that included my Missouri students as well as my Phoenix students, all thanks to Zoom.  It was held in a church a couple blocks from our house and is the one that Fred Olver, our blind neighbor attends.  It used to be a grocery store so it isn't much for looks but the acoustics are fantastic, they have a Steinway grand piano, and their wifi is good.  Here are a couple of photos.  The second one is of Noah.  I have fourteen students (2 in Columbia, 3 in Saint Louis, 4 in Ballwin (grandkids), and 5 in Phoenix) and eleven of them performed yesterday.  

 

After the recital (and an earlier baptism that I played piano for), Steve and I just hunkered down in the warm house for the rest of the day.  We hardly watched anything all week.  I started watching Notting Hill Thursday night while Steve was at church meetings.  It was funnier than I remembered and also had more foul language than I remembered.  I decided to just read the synopsis rather than finish watching.  I am glad I did because I had forgotten that the middle part is so sad and hard to watch.  On Friday night, Steve and I watched the first episode of Andor and after just one show, I decided to read the synopsis of all the other episodes to determine whether we wanted to continue.  (remember, I LIKE spoilers.  I read the ends of books).  And, after reading, I think we will pass on that series.  I am not a fan of anti-heroes or of heist movies and Andor is both.  I guess I am getting old....

Halloween and the first of November

While we were in Indiana last weekend, Steve and I got to visit a bit with Shiloh before she had to go to work Sunday afternoon.  She works at Door Dash which seems like it is trying to become the Amazon of food and snacks and assorted household items.

I also convinced Stratton and Alex to pose for a photo.  Don't they look thrilled to do so?  Alex has lost weight and seems much more fragile.  Sigh.

We got back to Saint Louis around noon on Monday.  Plenty of time to prepare the char-bootery board for dinner with the Southerlands before we all headed out to trick-or-treat around the Holly Hills neighborhood.  There were LOTS of trick-or-treaters and sometimes getting the treats was slow going because of the unusual Saint Louis tradition of having to tell a joke before getting a treat.  Where did that come from???  Weather was absolutely perfect.  It was a very fun evening.

Larkin was a candy fairy, Lucy a glowing stick person, Quinn was a rocket boy (the legs in jeans are fake, his legs are the flames coming out of the bottom of the rocket pack), Noah was the scientist from Alien who had the creature emerge from his chest.

Speaking of scary, this is the root of the elephant ears plant I dug up last week (they cannot tolerate frost).  It looks like an alien.  For size comparison, it is sitting in a gray basin like the ones you get from a hospital stay. Pretty huge!  And below it are the enormous leaves I trimmed off.

Here is the back of our garage in the alley.  The mums are so pretty and those are herbs in front:  oregano, thyme, and sage.

Let's see, Tuesday, November 1st, I had to be at the temple by 6:45 am for a 4-hour shift at the recommend desk.  The temple is still closed for repairs and I was a volunteer to check the recommends of the construction workers as they entered to work for the day.  Members got a colored wrist band.  Non-members got a different colored band.  The time went quickly as I had brought plenty of things to do while I sat.  After I finished, I drove to Harris-Stowe State University to check out the auditorium where our civic orchestra concert was to be held.  It was at that time that I learned that we were NOT performing at the Emerson Performance Center on the campus but at another performance hall in the main administration building!!!  What???  How did that misinformation happen????Well, the tickets were already printed and mostly distributed but I was able to tell the program printers to "hold the presses" so changes could be made.  An email had to be sent to the whole orchestra.  One of many emails I sent all week leading up to the concert Saturday night.  Programs got picked up on Friday.  Happily, they turned out beautifully (even though I spelled principal wrong) The whole week leading up to the concert was a lot of work.  And that didn't include the cello practicing I also did.  Needless to say, I am happy this concert is in my rear view mirror.  It was fun music but pretty difficult to play at the tempos the conductor took.  And, working with Harris-Stowe was challenging.  Good thing we didn't have to pay for that venue !  But, I hope we never have to play there again.  Below is me with Genie, my cello student who attended....

Steve and I managed to actually watch a movie - but it had to be done in two shifts.  We saw "Belle" which was very well done, gorgeous soundtrack, compelling story.

I will close with a couple of photos of Sarah in her snail costume which she wore at the Ogden Nature Center's "Creatures of the Night" presentation.  (yeah, we all admit that snails are not nocturnal, but she looked cute anyway)

 

The end of October (already???)

I decorated a bunch of Halloween/autumn cookies last Sunday evening while we chatted with some of our daughters.  The plan was to distribute them to neighbors, Primary students, and to folks to whom we minister.  And that is what we did throughout the day on Wednesday.  I have just enough left in the freezer for when the Southerlands come over on Halloween tomorrow night.

Steve and I determined that before all the beautiful autumn leaves fell off the trees, we would make the time to ride our bikes around our neighborhood to admire the color.  We managed to do that Monday and Wednesday morning.

We didn't ride on Tuesday because it FINALLY rained!  All day and into the night.  We had not had rain for over a month and that is rare for Saint Louis.  I dumped out two inches from the rain gauge.  Notice the two biking photos - Steve is in shirt sleeves on Monday and we are in hoodies on Wednesday.  

Most of the week was spent working on the upcoming orchestra concert programs.  Our former program-maker stepped down at the end of last season and no one in the orchestra raised their hand when we asked who would like to take it on this season SO, I got the job by default!  I AM the only paid person for the orchestra so I guess that is why it fell to me.  I should have started working on the programs a couple of weeks ago but tickets had to be created and printed first.  The previous program maker sent me her files and I thought I could just open them and do some deleting/adding and all would be easy.  Wrong!  I am not sure what good the files she sent me are since they are all in PDF format.  I guess just for reference.  Fortunately, I had an old program from last season and that was more useful than any of her files.  So, I had to build everything from scratch.  I visited the printer on Thursday to make sure I knew how to send all the various pages (president's message, conductor bio, roster, donors, program notes, etc) and they were very helpful.  Just this morning I sent the last three pages to the printer and I will be able to pick up the programs by this Thursday.  One of things I was waiting for was the last name of one of our substitute percussionists to add to the roster page.  I emailed him twice and texted him and he never replied.  As a result, he will appear in the program simply as Gene.  I briefly entertained the thoughts of making up a last name (Drumming Machine was a favorite) or leaving him off altogether.  

When I wasn't at the computer working on programs, I visited a dermatologist for a routing all-body skin cancer screen, I trimmed up some pots at pottery, I taught music lessons, Steve helped an old fellow in the ward who had some shopping needs, and Steve and I toured another long-term care facility called Southview.  THAT place was really nice! 

Friday afternoon, Steve and I drove to visit Julina and Alex for the weekend.  Julina, Steve, and I attended the Indianapolis Temple Saturday afternoon.

Sally, Linus, and I joined Julina and Banjo for a Saturday afternoon walk.  

We will visit Shiloh this afternoon - we're supposed to go on a walk with the dogs but rain is forecasted so that might not happen - and we will head back to Saint Louis tomorrow morning.  Gotta be back by Halloween night! 

p.s. no movies were watched last week - too busy with concert programs

Quite a busy week

Last Sunday, October 16, Beckie, Steve, and I got to attend a choir concert that Emily was singing in.  It was held in a high school auditorium close to us and it was quite delightful!  Plus, we got to see all the Southerlands!

Then, on Monday, the weather turned COLD.  And, with the wind chill, it was REALLY COLD!  Steve and I had planned to go camping that night but the thought of getting up at 2:00 am to walk to the bathroom was just not appealing.  So, instead, that afternoon, we just drove down to St. Francois State Park  (less than an hour's drive south of us) where we had planned to camp and we checked out the campsites to pin down some good ones (close to the bathrooms) when we actually DO camp there and we took a small hike on one of the trails and enjoyed the beautiful autumn color.  We left the dogs at home because, honestly, they are not hikers.  

some close-ups of flowers along the trail....

Early in the week, I picked all of the tomatoes because we had frost which basically ended the growing season.  No more zinnias to adorn my bathroom window sill.  And, I picked the rose buds so they could last a little longer indoors.

Wednesday, Elizabeth Crippen came into town.  She needed to go to IKEA and I was very happy to go along (LOVE that place!).  She stayed for dinner, two Scrabble games, and then spent the night.  It was a good visit.\

For the last week or so, I have been sewing/making candy corn pillows and fabric pumpkins. I got all the fabric from recycled items I got from the Goodwill Outlet.   It has been a fun project.  Look at the size of that bag of stuffing!

Friday was a rather wild day.  Four things needed to happen that day:  I was to be the driver for Sam Carpintero who had outpatient surgery to have a ganglion cyst removed from her wrist, I had a one-hour cello/violin lesson with a student, I needed to go to pottery, and we had an electrician scheduled to come and work on a couple of projects.  Happily, everything got accomplished.  It was a happy thing to have the electrician come.  We wanted him to create two switches in both of the upstairs bathrooms to separate the light from the exhaust fan.  The fan is so noisy and not always needed when one is in the bathroom.  Plus, we had a live wire in the ground outside next to the southwest corner of our deck - which is dangerous!  It is incredible that I never shocked myself while planting things around it and that Linus didn't shock himself when he would occasionally pee on those plants.  I never knew it was there until one day last summer when I was watering the area, I noticed a line of smoke coming up from the ground!  When I went to investigate, THAT is when I got a shock.  The electrician  suspected it might have been for a security light sometime in the past and he just turned the juice off.  While in that process, he discovered that some of the clips in the circuit breaker downstairs were loose so he fixed that problem.  Wow, we could have had an electrical fire due to the shoddy workmanship on that breaker!  So, while the electrician was not really cheap, it is SO nice to have a nice quiet bathroom now and to have peace of mind.  

Saturday morning, Steve and I made apple jelly and raspberry jam!  Some of the apple juice came from Steven and Tamara's crabapple tree and the raspberries were from a 10 for $10 deal at Schnucks.  Then, we had the sister missionaries over for dinner (plus Sam).  Turns out that Sister Bronson is good friends with a young man who was a missionary in Phoenix while we were there (Elder Robert Jensen).  So, we had a photo taken for her to send to him.

We watched two movies this past week:  White Nights on Friday and Cyrano on Saturday.  I am not sure what caused Steve and I to remember White Nights, which came out in 1985, but we wanted to see it again.  Watching Baryishnakov and Hines dance was just a treat.  Cyrano was the 2021 film with Peter Dinklage (the "angry elf" from Elf).  It was a musical, which I was not expecting, and very beautifully done.  It was also quite sad.  I got both DVDs from the library.  Yay public libraries!