Autumn is here!

And it's a race to have the farm ready for winter.

Yesterday we re-floored the hay shed. Now all we need is for the hay to be delivered. It's due to arrive this week.

Our heating oil is all pre-bought for the fall, winter, and early spring. We've got a spanking new chimney. I feel much more secure than I did two weeks ago.

We did stop at Ikea on the way home, and I picked up items I'd been needing for the household. I also fed all of us for exactly $4.01 at the Ikea cafeteria. The food was so good. MW and LW had a blast playing with all the displayed products in the children's section.

Afterward, we scooted under I-95 to the waterfront. We walked over to the wharf where Amistad and Quinnipiak are moored. Amistad was not docked, must have been out on a sail, but Quinnipiak was there and she is a beautiful ship. We watched seagulls bickering, cormorants diving for fish, saw schools of fish below the water's surface, sailboats coming in an out of the harbor, a giant oil barge delivering its load, people fishing on the jetties. We found a little spit of sand, and we collected shells. This was LW's first time ever seeing the ocean. She loved it.

It's always strange for me to go back to New Haven. I lived there for a long time before we moved north, and sometimes I miss it very much. Other times I miss it not at all. I'm glad I lived there, ultimately; I had an awful lot of fun in that little city, and it's where I met MW so it's an important place for me. Ikea, by the way, is located only a couple hundred yards from the business where MW and I met, and from Long Wharf Theatre where I was working at the time.

Here's a spider that has set up shop in our overgrown flowerbed by the house. She's a gorgeous Shamrock orbweaver spider, Araneus trifolium.