Acorns and Insect Traps

It was 85 today and yet it is indeed fall. The weather is cooling slowly, pumpkins are everywere, the oak trees are throwing acorns around like confetti and I hallucinate thunder lately. We have a bowl of acorns mixed with buckeyes on our table and a today the boys and I picked a bowl of olives to go with them. Must cure some. Sometime this week I am also bound and determined to take the boys and head for the mountains to pick apples for pie and sauce and have a donut or two. Its time.

The neighbors two houses down have a pair of sweet gum trees that were just beginning to blush yellow (the closest to maples on our block) and then we had a wild, windy day and in the night the tops snapped off. Strangest thing ever. There they were all over the sidewalk. Have to walk a little further for our fall leaves.

Today I chatted with a super friendly man who works with the city, hanging traps for invasive insects in many of the neighbor trees including our orange tree. I saw him install it, reaching up over the fence on the neighbor's drive and there it hung all week, this strange glass jar with fluid inside on a wire hanger. He was a super friendly guy who must have been at least 6 feet tall, tall, strong boned features and a great smile, he had a Hispanic accent and I was almost brave enough to try Spanish with him. His name tag said Mohammed. Such a fabulously interesting world we live in now. Mo will be back to check out the tree again with his traps and has taken the results back to his lab for research. 80 some species are being watched for and hunted down. Hope our tree is clear!

Tomorrow is Park Day with our new homeschool group, time to keep digging that social connection framework in a little firmer. Tomorrow I also workout. For serious.