Fall, before the snow

 It took until October, but the geraniums on the front porch flower bed FINALLY bloomed. In all fairness, they ARE in the shade for nearly the entire day.  I guess they really DO need sunshine to be happy!

We are having a bit of a hailstorm and some rain, complete with Thunder and Lightening! We have not had any measurable rain in a very long time.

We are expecting a freeze tonight, and since I have so many green tomatoes in the garden, we decided to cover up the plants we have left.  A few pepper plants and a few tomato plants are out there, under tarps. Ugh. Water + dirt = Mud. That is going to be a big mess when we go out there next!

Mike and I went to the St. George Temple this afternoon. The Cedar City Temple is closed for a two-week cleaning, so we went down there. He did names for Initiatory and I went through an Endowment session.  Mike still can't reach comfortably behind him to tie on ceremonial clothing when he attends, so he skipped the endowment session.  We were married there, as were most of our kiddos. I was endowed there. It looks so very different now.  They restored it to what it might have looked like in the 1800's, I suppose.  But it was nice.  We stopped for ice cream on the way home.

After we got home, I hurried over to the Heaton's garden.  They, too, are preparing for a freeze, and had many unused ripe tomatoes.  So I picked a small bucket of them so I'd have enough to add to mine for a batch of tomato juice tomorrow. I seldom have enough to do a whole batch, so this will help a lot. Only I'll have to go buy some onions and carrots at the store for my V-8 juice. . . which is actually V-6, because the "Garden Vegetable Blend" juice recipe I use only has SIX vegetables in it, not 8. Tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, celery and parsley. I guess I could add a beet and another herb and make it be V-8, but V-6 is good enough for me. It's pretty tasty.

Tonight was our Adult Religion class at the institute at 7 pm. So Mike and I went to that, too. We really enjoy listening to Kevin Bulloch teach. He is a master teacher.  They drove home to Cedar City from Gilbert Arizona today. They'd been there staying with Grandchildren. That's a long drive. I noticed that Kevin was leaning across the pulpit quite a bit, as though his back ached. I'm guessing it probably did! Plus, he was trying to get closer to a microphone that wasn't working. At all. But we could hear him quite fine.  Funny thing is--he cannot hear US!  He really can't hear well anymore. I don't know if he wears hearing aids or not, but he misses a lot of class comments. One time, he just was not getting it AT ALL. We were kind of playing a fun, participatory game but he couldn't tell what we were saying to him. After about 6 different people trying to convey our message, I finally ran up to the podium to TELL him to his face, loudly and clearly. I didn't want him to miss what we were ALL saying, poor guy. So then he had NaNon, his wife, come up to interpret the comments for him during that game segment.

So, it was a busy day!  Add to that taking Mom to the Diabetes doctor, it was plenty full. 

Mom's dr said she is doing well. Here's a photo of the graph from her Continual Glucose Monitor over the past two weeks. 

 

She's in a pretty good range most of the time, but where the high peaks were, I think were from stress from her new medicine (Lyrica for Nerve Pain) and the fogginess that she's had as a result. Medications come with tradeoffs--Pain or Foggy head?  I think she's choosing to have a foggy brain rather than pain. She felt pretty good on Tuesday, and today after the dr appointment, we went for a drive up the canyon to see the fall leaves. We went as far as Woods Ranch. Most of the leaves have turned and fallen. They were not at their peak, but it was a nice drive anyway. We had Burger King for lunch on the drive, too.  Temps are definetely dropping!

I had some backyard garden time here in the morning, too. And I made us a lovely fritatta with some of the Swiss chard I grew. They ONLY Swiss chard I grew!  One meal. Hopefully it'll come back next year and do better. I cleaned out the front flower pots that had lilies in them. I just pulled out the dead stems, readying them for winter. I hope they come back next year!

Here's the full Harvest Moon coming up over the neighbor's house.  So pretty. Wish my camera would focus on it and show what it really looked like.  (I think the comet makes up for it.)