Hi, everyone!
Grandma and Grandpa and I have been doing more things to get ready for winter! Last week, when we were out at the bay, I helped Grandma dig up the rosemary plant from the herb garden. It spends the winter indoors and goes back out when it gets warm again! I was happy it fit in the same pot as last year! Then we harvested the rest of the basil, before there was any frost. Grandpa was winterizing the powerboat engine, and I helped by checking for water in the battery pans and very back of the hull!
While we were out at the bay, we stopped at a farm market to get apples for Joe-san and Nancy-san and pears and more butternut squash for us! This is the time of year that Grandma makes soup to serve at winter events. When we got back to Fairport, I helped her make big batches of Hungarian mushroom soup and curried squash and pear soup. I sliced the mushrooms in the food processor, then I helped sauté the onions for both soups at the same time! After that, there was a LOT of peeling and chopping to get the squash and pears ready to cook.
When the mushroom soup was done, I helped Grandma cool it in a water bath so it would stay safe to eat. Grandma showed me how to use the immersion blender to puree the squash and pear soup. That was fun, and a lot easier than doing batches in the regular blender! We cooled that soup the same way and divided both soups into quart containers to freeze. We did use the regular blender the next day, to make our final batches of pesto for the year!
While we were cooking, it was raining! We had two days of steady rain — more than we’d had for the rest of October combined! When it stopped raining, Grandma took me to Corbett’s Glen to see what Allens Creek was doing! There was a lot of water going into the tunnel entrance, and a tree was stuck at the tunnel outlet!
We could hear roaring water all the way along the path to Postcard Falls! I don’t remember whether there was an island in Allens Creek the last time I visited, but water was rushing along both sides of a rocky outcrop! I did stop to see my log friend, who looked especially soggy!
It’s the time of year when salmon are trying to swim upstream in Allens Creek. I don’t think any of them would have been successful jumping Postcard Falls the day we visited! There was white water all the way to the place the creek bends away from the path downstream! The trees and sky looked like a peaceful fall day, but the water didn’t!
When we got back to the tunnel entrance, I saw a parking sign from the 1940s posted! Back then, Corbett’s Glen was a private picnic grove, not a Brighton town park.
After our trip to Corbett’s Glen, Grandma took me to a Fairport village park. There’s a new statue in the little park between Fairport Village Landing and the Erie Canal. It’s a mule, honoring the animals who towed barges along the Erie Canal before motorboats were common. I made friends right away! I was happy to see some fall color in the leaves along the canal, too!
Our adventure for the day wasn’t quite over! Grandma took me with her to early voting at Perinton Square. There was a machine that scanned a bar code on Grandma’s voter notification letter and printed out the right ballot for her voting district. I reminded her that she needed to mark choices on both sides of that ballot! Then I made sure the ballot was accepted after she slid it into the machine! One of the election inspectors thanked me for coming!
When we went back out to the bay, we could see what the heavy rain had done there! We had some big tree branches down, and the banks of the creek that goes under the road had been scoured by rushing water. There was more fall foliage color, but still a lot of green leaves!
Grandpa had two projects. First, he restored the cover that drops over the boat to protect it from dirt in the boathouse. I helped spread the new plastic over the frame. Then, he cut the bottoms off the boathouse side doors. Now that the boathouse floor is higher, the doors needed to be shorter! The north side one will be replaced in the spring, but it will keep rain and snow out until then.
Grandma managed the Election Day Bake Sale at our church for at least forty years and had been thinking last year’s Presidential election might be the last one. The pandemic happened, so the bake sale tradition ended a year earlier than expected. Last weekend would have been the one for packing everything over to church. Instead we were home for James and Thomas to come trick or treating. Their costumes bowled me over! November started on Monday, and yesterday was Election Day. Grandma and I couldn’t resist doing a little bit of bake sale baking! We made a half recipe of chocolate bread and a half recipe of cinnamon rolls. I helped weigh the dough for the cinnamon rolls, just like I used to do at church. Then I made sure the pans were well greased! I’ve made cinnamon rolls before, but this was my first time helping with chocolate bread! Grandma said measuring was the best way to cut the right-sized pieces of dough to roll into balls! We were happy with the way the breads turned out!
Grandma said she missed baking with all the church families, but she didn’t miss lugging all her baking equipment over to church and back! In between baking the cinnamon rolls and the chocolate bread, she even had time to help Grandpa make my first leaf pile of the season!
Love,
Lion-san