October 15 ramblings

Fall is definitely here. The weather, however went from HOT to cold, and now on October 15 the temperatures are slightly above normal. That strong cold front that came through last week had virtually no rainfall with it. A couple mornings were rather cool with a skirting of near freezing, but only a hint of frost, however. Rainfall is only a slight threat later this week, and the long range outlook is for dryer than normal precipitation.
On the morning mile walks, it smells like fall. Leaves are falling from the trees but that's due to the extremely dry weather. My Sugar Maple has dropped leaves, but the ones on the tree have not a bit of color on them. This is a volunteer tree and up and down Sandy Run Creek road I can see an occasional Sugar Maple in the woods. Sugar Maple trees are not native, so someone SOMEWHERE planted some and the seeds propagated far and wide. While walking this morning I noticed the white flowered weed, I mean, uh, wildflower is blooming again. It has little white blooms about as big as a medium sized fingernail, and is round. I call these a “Micro” daisy. There's a yellow version that is blooming, but not as profusely as the white ones. They aren't as big and as abundant due to the dryness.
According to reports, the leaves are just starting to turn in the North Carolina mountains. I will be going to Black Mountain this weekend to Full Moon Farm and the last Howl In of the year. Jolene likes to go now, and she has a couple of boyfriends up there. She also is now socialized enough to enjoy all the different people she gets to meet.
I mowed around the radio building. There was a lot of grown up weeds, and I also stirred up a lot of dust. I also need to get in there and get the radio room cleaned up and set up for fall and ham radio stuff. There's a lot of equipment that needs to be restored. I need to replace all the capacitors in the Viking Valiant I that was originally Claude Ragsdale's. I remember him talking on it from his General Store in Blair, SC. That radio has not seen power applied in well over 30 years. Lets hope it does work after all the capacitors get replaced. I wouldn't dare fire it up without those new caps. I don't want to destroy the transmitter!