found at last

Glorious day! I found my favorite coffee pot, though not until I'd taken these pictures. The backup coffee pot is retired to the basement with my gratitude for its availability in a time of crisis.

I have coffee mugs! I much prefer to hold ceramic in my hands as the mornings grow colder to the plastic thermos cups I've been using.

And I have a few plates. Very few, and along with the coffee pot I found a few bowls, but I can stop eating out of tupperware after two and a half months.

I emptied two dish barrels in two days. Most of the contents were fine china that I don't want to use every day, especially since I'm going to try using a dishwasher for the first time since I lived with my parents, but it's progress.

first frost

More or less the first. There was a touch last week, but this time it was everywhere. Except in my yard.

My neighbor's yard had a little, but it almost stopped at their property line as it did at mine.

Glad I won't need to scrape the car windows often this winter.

state of the guest room

If you were to visit me unexpectedly, the guest room upstairs is not exactly ready.

The bed could be cleared off and made up without too much effort.

But unless your visit had sunny weather throughout, you'd have to share with the laundry.

leaf color

At last I have some leaves turning. In my neighborhood change had begun two weeks ago, but until the last few days all of my trees were still green.

That one still is. Actually I'm not sure whether it belongs to me or the neighbors, but it hangs over my drive, so I'll get its leaves when they fall.

The oak right over the deck is still green, too, but the one I've tied the clothesline to has turned glorious orange.

The back yard as a whole is just dipping its toes in the change of seasons, though.

fall violets

I've found lots of violet leaves in the grass at the new place, but only yesterday and today did I find any blooming in confusion at the continuing warm weather. I brought one in yesterday, and it withered before I could take its picture, so as soon as I picked these two (while mowing the grass) I got out the camera.

A promise of spring before the cold weather even settles in. (It flirted with us this month, but mostly the cold has had other places to be. I'm writing this on the deck in shirt sleeves just at sunset.)

made by friends

By one friend, in this case. Nowadays working on lampwork beads, she has made art by many different methods. I made sure none of this was packed by the movers, and I got the dreamcatcher hung before they were even through packing.

This may not be the final placement for the hand made paper bowl, but it spent the last four years very near this position.

Many thrift-store blenders gave their lives to create naturally dyed paper during M's paper sculpture period. I remember the blackberry paper was purple, but I don't remember what created this red. The gold beads were embedded in the paper while it was drying, and have stayed there for the past fifteen years or more.

Finally, the concrete stepping stone imprinted with plants that grew in our garden while we were roommates.

reaching the electric panel

Since I moved in on August 21, the electric panel has been inaccessible due to boxes.

Like this:

I've been working on making a path to the panel for several weeks. Since I can't reach any of the lights on that side of the basement, I could only work for a little while in the late afternoon. (Not that I had hours of free time at other times of day, you understand.)

From the laundry area head towards the old refrigerator:

Then turn right:

Halfway along the wall is my goal:

And beyond it, yet another goal:

Four boxes of dishes which may mean I can stop eating out of freezer-to-microwave lunch containers (which have their conveniences if you have to have only two or three things to put food in.) I hope to find my glass jars of flour and sugar in there, too, and then I can actually bake things!

But the important part of reaching the electric panel, with cold weather approaching, was to be able to try my electric heater in the bathroom and know that if it blew a circuit breaker, I could reset it. It did not, I am happy to say, but with 7.5 amps on a 15 amp circuit containing I knew not what, I wasn't willing to risk it.

You can tell it has been with me a while. I bought it in 1971 when I was in my first apartment in college, but the styling suggests it wasn't a new design then. The rust is from living alternately in damp bathrooms and in basements when not needed. After forty years it can still heat a small room more than ten degrees Fahrenheit in five minutes. (It's a mere child, of course, compared to the refrigerator pictured above, which was made in 1953 and has never had a service call. I cherish reliable appliances.)