Late Report on Halloweeen

This was our first Massachusetts Halloween. Our old house, on Pumpkin Street, was a natural draw. Fortunately, we had no windows that faced the street and it was easy to pretend to not be at home. That's not the case here. Combine that with the fact that the town collected donations brought us candy to distribute to the kids and we really had no choice but to participate in Halloween.

Being at the town center, we'd been warned that we might expect as many as 200 trick-or-treaters. Halloween being on a Saturday threw a wrinkle into things. It might have meant an increase but we only saw about 60 trick-or-treaters. The kids were probably at parties or traveled to other towns - they weren't here.

Trick-or-treating was from 5-7pm with a parade to follow at 7pm. We closed up at 7pm and went up to the town square to watch the start of the parade. We'd been told that the entire town participates in the parade. The Fire Department led the parade and the police department followed up. In between, there were 4 or 5 small children with their parents. We cheered them on as they went past and then went back home.

We had a ton of candy left over that, through Briar, we were able to donate to charity.

Last night, we attended a dinner party at one of our neighbor's home. This party is an annual tradition and usually includes a bonfire where a cutout of a witch is burned (must be a Massachusetts thing). It's been dry and it was pretty windy yesterday so the bonfire was cancelled. We had a nice visit with our neighbors, some of whom we hadn't met before.

It's been interesting to learn what we can see when the leaves are gone. Our lot abuts nearly every other lot on our block. We couldn't see any of them before but we can now see the silhouettes of almost every house on the block through the woods. The local church steeple seemed far away but, all of a sudden, it towers. We can even see the ancient tombstones silhouetted across the crest of the fill.

I've already mentioned the stone wall that we've discovered across the back of the property. I was seated next to the lady that we bought the house from at the dinner party and she told me that the wall goes all the way around the property. I've been thinking about building a greenhouse in the brush area at the back of the lawn. The prior owner told me that, come springtime, we'll see that there's a large concrete slab back in that area (it used to be a goat shed). It might provide a perfect foundation for the greenhouse.

-JC-

Mountain Climb, Tree Removal and Discovery in Our Own Back Yard

A couple of years ago, we saw the foliage from the top of Wachusett Mountain and we have been meaning to go up there again. This week, we invited Briar along and visited the mountain. We had intended to drive up the mountain and climb the last quarter mile or so, The gate was closed because of some maintenance that was going on so we had to park at the Visitors Center near the base of the mountain and hike up. It was a beautiful day for a hike.

That's Boston in the distance.

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That's Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Briar, Gus and the kids climbed it a couple of weeks ago with the Cub Scouts.

When we had our house inspection, it was pointed out that we had a couple of dead branches that were potential threats to the house. On further inspection, we realized that we had 2 trees, an ash that had succumbed to beetles and a hickory that had been choked by a vine. We had them both cut down today.

This is the vine that strangled our hickory. It's twisted around a maple that it killed before jumping to the hickory.

They also did some cleanup in the neighboring hickory.

Taking the top off the ash.

TIMBER! The last bit of the hickory coming down.

Cleanup was still in progress but I shot this view of the finished product while there was still some light.

While all of this was going on with the trees, we discovered that we could finally get to our rear property line through the now leafless trees. We weren't surprised to learn that there is a stone wall on the line.

That's our house down through the trees from the back property line.

-JC-