Fall

It's a late fall. And it's probably not going to be a particularly pretty one due to the dry summer. The usual suspects -- the maples most notably, are still fairly showy, and may be standing out all the more because of the dull greens and browns the other tired trees are taking on. But we have an abundance oaks in Missouri, and the climate here rarely lends gives us prime oak colors. This year, I suspect dull reddish brown at best.

Still, if you know when and were to look, you can see some of the magic of the season. If you can position the trees between you and the sun in the early morning or late afternoon, the sun will take what colors are there and kick it up a couple of notches. In a good year, this river birch would be a beautiful yellow. There is still some yellow, but mostly dry browns. Still, look what the sun angle gets you.

Friday evening Vicki and I went to Greg & Georgeanne's where they had some friends over for BBQ, beer, and a fire in the outdoor fireplace. There was a lot of good homebrew from Greg and a couple of his friends who also brew. I met a Public Administration professor from a University in China who has been here on a year's sabatical and spent quite a bit of time talking to him. Vicki and the ladies pretty much stayed inside most of the evening, athough a couple of them (Vicki included) came out to the fire after Georgeanne ran out of gas and went to bed. As one might expect, we all had a good time doing what people do best. Eat, drink, and be merry.

I had a bunch to do this weekend. The deck needed cleaning, plants probably needed to come in off of it to winter over inside. I needed to clean out the bird bath and dam up the overflow spout for wintertime. Clean up my clutter in the bedroom -- mostly junk mail and old bills. And I got a decent start on it -- cleaned the clutter, when Daryl called. He wanted to go fishing.

I suck at fishing.

Daryl doesn't. I've always figured I could learn a thing or two hanging around him. Plus Daryl doesn't "reach out" that much... he always figures he's imposing. So I don't want to foster that impression. It was a nice day. I went.

We went to his nephew's house out toward Englewood. His nephew is alomost his age, which is about Vicki's age. He was busy putting up interior walls and insulation in his gigantic work .... "shed". If you can call a building four times the size of your house a shed.

We trolled around the pond on a breezy afternoon, temperatures in the 50's. Breezy. Good thing I grabbed that fleece jacket on my way out the door. Apparently the temperatures dropped all afternoon. I had the Mizzou game quietly in one ear. Which is funny... reading this blog the last few weeks you'd think I was Mr. Sports fan again. Not really. We do follow the Tigers, though and they are doing well this year.

Daryl caught several small croppie and bluegill. I pulled in a croppie and a couple of small bluegill and a decent size bass. But we let him go in the end. The rest of the fish were strict catch & release.

Helped his nephew move a very large plant that had been out on his deck into the house. Then went down to Devil's Backbone ... because Daryl wanted to. He grew up around there. I think he has some good memories there, and his life in the last year or so has been less than happy. That's where I saw the river birches ... right over Cedar Creek. Devil's Backbone is a tall rock outcropping in a narrow horseshoe bend in Cedar Creek. On the way back Daryl wanted to try one more pond on his brothers place at sunet. He pulled in about a 3 lb catfish, but released it as well. Apparently small stock pond catfish taste like.... well, a small stock pond.

Last night I had to grab all the plants from the deck right before bed and bring them in. Which is a bigger project than it sounds like. Three of them are huge. But there was a frost forecast for last night.

We missed a morning low of 32 by a degree (so the plants would've been ok but it was time for them to come in anyway). We went to Breakfast at the Elks this morning with Ryan & Kristie and Brian and Kristin. That's "RyKri" and "BriKri" (after "Bennifer" et. al.) Went and got some stuff at Lowe's, then came home and put a roast in the Big Green Egg, and got the deck taken care of. KevAng came over this afternoon for a little while, but had to get back to St. Louis where Kevin is starting a new job tomorrow. I put up the towel bars we bought today... and that's about all I got done.

And that about wraps up the weekend.