I've gone dark for over a week, enjoying some time back in Michigan with family and friends. No projects, no tools. Just crisp fall air and overwhelming amounts of water and the color green. Living in the desert southwest is a land of beige and earth tones. There's nothing like this blast of fall color.
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| Ok. Gracie did have a little wood work project to do. |
We timed our trip perfectly. Michigan was beautiful, crisp temperatures in the mornings and evenings with warm sunny days (mostly). Sweetie and I felt a homesick, missing living there.
The kids had a blast. It was fall break in Arizona, but school was in session in Michigan. We had parks to ourselves, only sharing them with the seagulls, Canadian Geese, and Swan.
We enjoyed a day of apple picking, cider and donuts at the cider mill / orchard, where Gracie befriended several wooley caterpillars...
...and the other of our young offspring, quickly devised a rousing game of apple stomping.
We spent a nice evening at my folks place on the lake, ending with making s'mores.
Alas, work and school beckoned us home. The beauty of Michigan will soon give way to the horrors of winter driving, shoveling snow, and freezing one's butt off pumping gas. Arizona has passed through its time of summer inferno and is offering months of sunny, beautiful paradise. We'll miss everyone, but we'll miss them while we enjoy wearing shorts and sandals, picnicking in December.
We returned home, tired and jet lagged from the three hour time difference. There'd obviously been a wind storm, judging the amount of newspaper in the yard and pool, not to mention the submerged patio chairs. The pool was filthy with the vacuum tangled in a chair.
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| Allow me to show you to your seat sir. |
What a difference a couple weeks makes. The cactus I'd cut up and laid out is dramatically dried up. Most of it is crispy, like weathered cardboard, ready to be scooped up and thrown away.
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| Pita chips anyone? |
You know me; of course, with a post title of There and Back Again, there has to be a hobbit reference, right? A Lord of the Rings movie quote perhaps?
Nope. But it all comes together in the end...
This is a grand item of mystery we found laying smack-dab in the middle of our front yard, when we got home, right beside the walkway.
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| Take this back to Hobbiton please. |
Seriously, what the hell is this? Who leaves a collectible plate in someones yard when they leave town? More importantly, who owns a "collectible" plate featuring a freakish, barefoot circus-child that looks like one of Samwise Gamgee's hobbit children? "Little Strong Man" .... I just don't have a clue.