November Changes

The leaves finally fell off most of the trees. Then the north wind came up for a few days and cleared most of the leaves from the front yard to the back. Larry used the leaf blower and moved the heavy covering down the hill on tarps. The neighbor loaned us his leaf picker-upper and he got most of the back yard. He has mowed, picked up leaves, mowed again and moved leaves. He was disappointed when we took his picture because the piles had settled and were only a bit more than knee-deep. They had been even higher when he first brought them down.

When we had a few really warm days, we decided to get out the Christmas lights. It was a delight to be handling them in mild weather. It seems we are usually freezing when we put them up. As Larry says, he still has to get out the extension cords and connect them up to power, but the painstaking work of attaching them to the eaves and arranging them on the trees is complete. Today we woke up to a real covering of snow but still less than an inch. It is cool enough that it won't melt today. He said it was perfect snow for deer hunting. Actually, he was deer hunting last weekend and they had a covering of snow in northern Minnesota too. It was in the teens and twenties, so it was cold! He spent some time out on the deer stand but had decided to head home Sunday noon. He was inside working on a computer with the Raeth's, his hosts, when they looked out in their yard to see a fawn browsing on their grass. Le asked if Larry wanted the deer. The answer was 'yes' and here is a picture of Larry butchering it in our garage. We had some of the meat and it is delicous. It is all packaged up except for the hamburger (deerburger?).