The weather has taken a turn; the leaves are red and orange and yellow, the wind is stronger and the thermometer is dipping into single digits (Celsius) starting tomorrow. Our last few days have been filled with “before we leave” activities.

Jim spent a couple of days in Ottawa finishing off a contract and spent a day getting the house and garden ready for winter – patio furniture put away, exterior water turned off, leaves raked. I was finally able to cross “clean and tidy the rec room” off my list and it is ready to serve as an extra bedroom when the family gathers at Christmas time. I bought a couple of holly bushes and a hundred (or so) bulbs for the garden. The hollies are in the ground but I waited till the last minute to plant the bulbs. With our changeable weather, we’ve been having quite the warm spells and I didn’t want those bulbs to start to sprout instead of getting a good dormant settling in time. Watch – I’ll be putting them in by flashlight the night before we leave!

We had a fabulous hiking trip to Utah at the end of October with long time friends, Charles and Linda. We’ve talked about doing this for years and finally pulled it together. They are avid hikers and it was a treat to travel with them to this part of the US where they hiked a few years ago. We hadn’t been there before so it was all new to us. I’ll get a posting put up on the trip – in the meantime, I posted a couple of new albums in the gallery so you will at least have some pics of our latest activities. (I also tried to put up an album of our Guatemala pictures from the spring but for some reason it wouldn’t load. I’ll try it again – or else just put up new ones this year!)

We watched Sandy’s progress last week – hoping our cruising friends and folks we’ve met in earlier trips along the eastern seaboard and in the Bahamas fared OK, and it seems they have. We’re grateful for that and cheer them all on as they head into a winter of travelling or settling in.

Time to go see if Jim has managed to turn some of the piles on our floor into neatly packed duffle bags. One more load of laundry; two more sleeps; a dozen more things to cross off the lists. We’ll be off on Tuesday! Guatemala – here we come.