a yellow carpet and the first weekend

After posting Thursday morning about the ginkgoes still being bright yellow and full of leaves I woke up Friday morning to trees that had lost half their leaves overnight and sitting here in the morning looking out at the one in the Little Backyard watching it rain down leaves. An hour later it had lost half what it had an hour previous. Two hours later it was almost bare. I tried to get a picture of the leaves raining down every time the breeze blew but while my eyes saw dozens, the camera only saw one or two. By the end of the day only a few stalwarts were clinging tenaciously to the tree.

It's the time of year, now that the tallow and the pecan behind it in the neighbor's yard have lost all their leaves, that I have to wear a cap in the mornings since I look east so as not to be blinded on sunny days until the sun gets higher than the top of the window.

Set-up on Thursday went quickly and smoothly. Our display and several others will stay the whole 3 weekends but others will come and go. Driving into and through the city we were seeing a rare display of fall colors triggered by those two nights of early freeze, the oaks and sweet gums and bradford pears were brilliant in reds and yellows. I miss having a sweet gum. We had one at the city house though I hated all those prickly balls all over the ground. They're common in the city but I don't think I've seen a single one out here. Same with robins, common in the city but an hour away I haven't seen a single one.

The first weekend of the open house is done and it was dismal for us, only one $50 sale, but everyone else had a good weekend. Our glass blower hosts sold all of their new pieces as well as lots of ornaments, small glasses, and paperweights, our fuser friend sold two of his sculptures that have been hanging around for years along with several other small plates/bowls, the woman that does enamel jewelry was very happy with her sales, and the new this year young glass blower next to us couldn't wrap his stuff up fast enough. It's not that people weren't buying in our price range, they just weren't buying from us but we did get lots of compliments and our work has never been an impulse buy. Some years we make no sales, some years we do well. Last year we had a great show while others didn't so it balances out. I'm happy everyone else did well and there are still two more weekends so we'll see.

Some miscellaneous pictures...

Minnie spent the weekend with my sister since we would be gone all day both days. As you can see she was just pining away.

When we were in town Thursday to set up we stopped by Trader Joe's to get the stuff we get there and bought some fresh peas which we had some of for dinner Saturday night. Marc sorted out 7 that had just started to sprout with a tip of root peeking out so I put them between layers of wet paper towel until I could get them planted. Today they looked like this and are now nestled in wet dirt in the sun.

I'm used to the wrens hanging out in the garage and being all curious about the stuff in there, they even like to check out the house in the spring when the door is open, but now we have a new guy hanging out in the garage. I posted about all the plumerias and other tropical plants in pots being stored in the garage for the winter and several weeks ago I surprised a male cardinal hanging out in the plumerias in there. In the days since, both Marc and I have seen him fly out when we leave the house via the garage door (or dart around when we enter the garage) and today he was in there again. I usually just ignore him but I did manage to get this picture while he was perched on the kiln. Right after I took the picture he flew out again.