out the bathroom window

If you go back a few years, you can see the view from showers at the old house, and compare its privacy with the bathroom view here.

[The weird blue background came with the link and I can't get rid of it.]

Thanks to privacy glass, absolutely no one can see into my bathroom unless they're standing on my deck (and rather close to the window at that) or have climbed a tree.

Quite a large tree.

I tried to pull back and give some context there, but shooting through a window on a bright sunny day is beyond my camera's capability. Or at least, mine.

turkey for one

Stony, up in the left corner, looks hopeful, but all I gave him was a piece of skin. The rest is mine. Luckily I have a freezer. I worked on Thanksgiving, of course, so I couldn't invite anyone to join me.

See, I do use the fine china, although a holiday probably doesn't count.

I'm not very unpacked, but that's one of two boxes left in the living room. (The new box is something to help store things in the kitchen, if I ever get time to put it together.)

Look at the dangling bits on the candlestick. My grandmother managed to save only seven drops from the hall chandelier in my great-great aunt's house (my grandfather's aunt) when it was torn down after she died. She saved them for years before she found this to add them to. I should have put a candle in it and lit it, because it was so dark at noon that I had to use flash to take these pictures. The living room faces north-east, but I'm still surprised there was so little light on a very sunny day. (See foil around turkey!)

useless hooks

I have no idea what the people who put these hooks up used them for, but I can't find a way to use them. I did have my skillets hanging on two of the three, but although they would go on the hooks easily, getting them off again was a struggle, so I'm keeping them in my too-scarce cabinet space.

Hanging the holiday season mugs on them was an impulse of the moment. (I have four, but the fourth one is blue.) I would like to hang something useful there, but these hooks seem designed to be hard to use. Nothing I have tried will fit there except mugs.

Since the window on the right is directly over the stove, something cooking related would be nice. Impossible so far, though. Still, I'm enjoying the mugs against the paint for the time being.

future Christmas tree

Here's the top of it, outside the kitchen window, providing a perching place for the birds as they take turns at the feeder.

Why, you ask, do I intend to remove such a useful tree? Well, the deck is several feet off the ground at that point, and the stair railing appears to be losing the battle.

And the tree is already about fifteen feet tall and less than fifteen feet from the house, and seems eager to get larger.

And it really doesn't have space to expand its roots.

The slight bulge in the retaining wall is not an artifact of the camera.

So my plan is to remove the top six feet or so and use it as a Christmas tree this year, and see if I can persuade it to be a shrub after I remove its growing tip, and if not, out it comes.

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.