Fall Has Arrived

With last weekend's rainstorm came cooler temperatures, and thus far those temperatures have stuck around.  In the mornings it's in the 50's and 60's instead of the 70's and 80's, and the temperature generally hasn't climbed much above 80 or so, whereas two weeks ago it was 90 and up.  Plus, the humidity has dropped markedly, so that one no longer feels like breathing outside is a chore.  It looks like fall is here!  In celebration of the season I purchased a few small decorative gourds and pumpkins (actually called "pumpkemons") at our local garden place, and I'm very pleased with the result.

Huzzah for our Simon Pierce bowl!

The cooler weather also makes working outside more pleasant, and we've been looking forward to getting some yardwork done this weekend.  Today I weeded our front walkway and daydreamed about when we will have the extra cash to re-mulch the front of the house, as the old faded bark mulch currently there is looking kind of ratty.  Next spring, perhaps.  Still, even the weeding made a huge difference.  Nick played lumberjack today and took down a beech tree with a combination of ax and saw.  His ultimate goal is to take down all of the smaller and medium trees in the front yard (except the dogwoods and the holly trees - those can stay).  With just the larger trees there, it will still look pretty and wooded but not so dark, and it will open up the space more. 

View of our house from across the street -
you can hardly see it for all the trees!

He also plans to clean up that scrubby slope next to the street, and you can see on the far right where we've already made some progress thanks to help from his parents.  I have been barred from that project since the slope is loaded with poison ivy (as Nick's dad found out).  That's fine with me, and I have plenty of other projects to do, such as getting our dinky little back patio clean.  It's an old brick patio that was once pretty, but is now overgrown with moss and weeds.

 

Not exactly attractive.

I weeded the patio a few weeks ago, but the weeds are regrowing and I hadn't tackled the moss yet.  The moss is actually dangerous because it makes the bricks slippery when wet, and I've already nearly fallen on my behind once.  So today I spent an hour or so (maybe less?) with a putty knife scraping off the moss until the bricks looked like this:

Better already!

I didn't finish, but the scraping will be easy enough to finish tomorrow.  Peeling off giant sheets of moss is rather satisfying, I admit.  Then I will spray the bricks with a dilute bleach mixture to kill the weeds and moss in the cracks and enable me to clean the bricks more effectively.  The bleach is supposed to keep moss from coming back as readily, too.  The catch is not to get onto the lawn, where it will kill what is already pitiful grass.  We might have to get some paving sand or pea gravel to fill in the cracks between bricks, because when I peel up the moss in the cracks a layer of mud comes with it and there is a gap left behind.  The bricks are starting to crumble too.  Eventually we hope to completely redo and expand the patio, but that will be a big expensive project for another year.