Going to Sleep

We are getting the garden ready to go to sleep.  It is very satisfying to rip plants out of the ground.  We are cleaning up to start over next spring.  Feels like a step in the right direction.  These fall days are so full of home-y feelings.  My goal this year is to slow down enough to take it all in.  To notice every nuance, and variation of leaf changing from alive to dead.  To take in every smell of the season, which right now happens to be drenched with apple.

Walking into the Moon Cabin, where we store our apples, takes me back to being four years old walking down the stone steps of my grandparents root cellar.  We were always warned about the danger of those steep hard steps,  and of the sandman that lived in the big pile of sand in the corner of the cellar.  It was dark, damp, and smelled like apples.

 

The deer are unabashedly eating whatever they can these days.  There are consistently six to eight of them cruising the orchard looking for apples.  They eat up all of the pulpy remains after we press the apples into cider as well.  They are well fed.  And, very comfortable. 

 

This is the old farmhouse (and outhouse) the homesteaders built.  It still has a lot of their old things in it, some broken down furniture, many different kinds of jars, coats, and I'm sure plenty of critters.  The kids think it is haunted.  I do too.  In a good way. 

I'm sure it wasn't fun walking to the outhouse in the middle of a cold wintry night.  How lucky we are to have indoor plumbing.  

As we head towards November and it's lovely feast of Thanksgiving, I am feeling very thankful to live in such a beautiful place.  Thanks Montana, thanks homesteaders, thanks Missoula.  

Happy Monday!