I raked 15 bags of leaves this weekend, 13 of which I had to wrangle on a rather blustery Saturday morning. Fortunately, my backyard is rather sheltered, so I only had to work around the worst of the gusts, but I definitely have some issues with Mother Nature deciding it would be fun to have the leaves finally all drop the exact weekend we’re supposed to have a Sunday night snow storm with a possible full foot of accumulation. But I’m done now, and the leaves have all gone to live in my mother’s composite bin.
We also moved into storm prep mode. The snow blower is accessible and guaranteed working, and the snow shovels have been moved out of the garage into our entry way. We even get to institute our creative snowstorm parking tonight. (We have four cars between the two apartments in my building. It’s amazing what snow will do around four cars parked in a block.) I’m not quite mentally prepared for a foot of snow, but at least we’re physically ready to deal with it.
Prior to my raking extravaganza, on Friday night, I did my traditional pre-season last trip to Target to stock up on essentials before it becomes impossible to park in the entire Maine Mall megaplex. I stopped at AC Moore and managed to find some non-full wool yarn for a scarf I wanted to make for my mother. It’s a simply easy circular pattern, so I’m well on my way after some knitting yesterday. (The Babylon 5-fest is progressing well. I’m now to the end of season three.) I’m knitting it on some Addi Turbo needles I picked up in York a couple weeks back. They’re so smooth! (Apologies for the charming flash work. My camera did not like the lighting in my living room this late afternoon.)
This has temporarily halted my progress on my mother’s socks, but since I’d planned the scarf for Christmas, and the socks for her birthday in February, I’m not sweating it. It’s December 2nd, and I have full confidence I can pull off a pair of socks between now and December 25th. But here they are in their current glory.
We also bought a Christmas tree today. Due to prior experiences with unwrapped trees and our narrow staircases, we decided to play Christmas tree roulette this year and buy a prewrapped tree. (We buy from a family that sets up shop at the convenience store around the corner, and they can’t rewrap a tree once it’s been unwrapped.) It’s still in the progress of relaxing, but it’s looking pretty good. I think we managed to avoid a clunker. We’re planning on decorating it tomorrow, during the snowstorm.
I’m trying to get a good picture in my head of the neighborhood sans snow. It’s going to be cold enough for a little while that whatever we do end up getting tonight and tomorrow probably won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.