And the seasons roll on...

I was almost afraid we'd miss Fall's beauty this year. It rained and rained. Then rained some more. Then rained again. Then finally--just a touch past the peak of fall's beauty--the sun came out, and it was still stunning. The leaves looked like gold.

And from our low hills we had views across the valleys. This is not the mountains of the Southerly parts of the state, but lovely rolling hills.

Even walks around the neighborhood are quite stunning.

But fall comes to an end very quickly. The perennials have all gone to seed.

This is fireweed fuzz--beauty in the bank for next year.

I was feeling very melancholy at the thought of moving far from these trails, and I'm sure grateful we still live in the 'hood.

Oct 4th is St. Francis' feast day, so we had the Blessing of the Animals at St. Jude's Episcopal Church in North Pole. The girls are so good. Raven is notably better at sitting still for an hour since last year.

After that, since we are in North Pole, we go for a lovelly walk at Chena Lakes!

A stunner of a day!

The Chena is on the high side, but not flood stage.

Last weekend, we decided to try walking the lower trails behind our old cabin, and they were frozen solid. Yay! Before I moved to Alaska, I had never heard of "winter only" trails. In California, we have "summer only" trails--high mountain passes that get snowed in in wintertime. But in Fairbanks we have swampy trails that are impassable until they freeze.

I wondered if the girls would bolt up the spur to the old cabin, but they didn't. Dogs are not sentimental, I guess.

Rosie Creek was easily passable, even though there was a trickle of water still.

These puddles being frozen solid is nice.

Raven investigates Rosie Creek.

And then we got our first sticking snow. Hello winter, here we come!

Big News!

Well, I guess everybody has to be an adult sometime, so after being a cabin dweller for 17 years, having graduated for 13, married for 10, and tenured for 4, I now have indoor plumbing. Yup, our 3-year search for a conventional home with running water has come to an end. Also, after much anxiety (on my part, not on the part of the Eminently Sensible DL), said new home is only about 900 feet from the cabin as the raven flies. It's also bright and cheerful.

Part of the reason that the search was so long is that the housing stock in Fairbanks is very... interesting. Because of the harsh weather, houses age faster; and because of the labor shortage, having old house problems fixed promptly is a real challenge. We've also noticed that the stock of houses that appear on the market skews large, like 3000-5000 square feet or more. For two people in a high heat load location, this is ridiculous. We do know a lot of people who live in normal mid-sized houses, but I guess they don't move on. At 1000 square feet, this place is slightly smaller than we wanted, but we jumped on it because small, tight, efficient, and low-maintenance was our goal and this was close enough. However, having more than one room is new! Like this is my experience using the bathroom:

And being in the kitchen:

And being in the bedroom:

And being in the other bedroom:

My sous-chefs still stay on duty, quality checking my KALE:

MMMM KALE!!!:

We did have to make a few small alterations. One is that Cricketerz is not used to stairs. The cabin had two steps that she took in one leap, but she wasn't into using individual stairs, so DL built her a ramp. She was reluctant to use it at first but Raven and I are pros at ramp training, and soon we got her so good she runs up that ramp so fast I can't even get a picture!

DL also had to reinforce the wood shed, which was creaking and on the verge of falling down:

In addition, we have conventional frame construction, with studs and drywall, so we can't just hang things all over the walls the way we did when our walls were logs. Here are some things we bought to give up more storage space for things I used to hang. One is this this really nice cast iron storage rack:

And I found this awesome rotary knife block! The sides are magnetic and there are slots on top as well. It turns out this "company" is a couple in Washington who emailed me personally after receiving my order and continued to communicate with me as we dithered whether to ship via USPS or UPS, to the house or to my PO box, etc. They were super awesome and after I received the knife block I emailed them a photo of it on my counter and they replied instantly that I had made their evening. :) I also bought these little rack thingies that Freddies uses to display plates, and I use it for cutting boards.

However, we still didn't have enough space to put all of our pots and pans. I could not fathom why, at 50% bigger, the new house had *less* space. But then I got to thinking. Almost all of my friends have some kind of kitchen hutch or something they put additional things in (either pots and pans, plates, cups, wine glasses, pantry stuff, etc). Maybe kitchens "as built" in their homes are just not meant to hold everything. Anyway DL came up with the concept and I did a quick search on the internet and it appears that butcher-block stand-alone storage is a very common thing! So I figured it would be easy to find in town. But none of the furniture stores had it. Then DL pointed out that perhaps this was not considered "furniture" and we should look at a kitchen supply store. So we went to the kitchen porn store. Wowee! Look at this place! There is some AK-specific stuff, too--aprons and oven mitts with Tlingit prints and Homer sea salt and kelp products.

And yes! Look what we found! Now the dogs have their stuff all in one place, and the rest of the kitchenware has a home!

Farewell, lovely cabin! I appreciate the wonderful years, and will never forget you! I feel like I had a fourth "growing up" in this place. There is (1) childhood, (2) adolescence, (3) that early 20s struggle to become functional, and then (4) that approaching-middle-age, becoming yourself and growing in confidence phase. I had that in this cabin, and I will be grateful forever.

Summer wheeling along...

Koda the malamute is back at Sirius for a visit while his parents are on a fishing trip, so I went to go squeeze him. Please enjoy my selfies.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZ

It has been a poor fireweed season. We see them, but not in the big pink fields we normally do. Well, it has been a weird year.

But mild enough to take walkies with friends, including Seester Bedbug!

Pretty afternoon.

So attentive for treats! Young dogs sit for treats, old dogs can do whatever they want!

We are grateful to our CSA from Calypso Farm for our diarrhea-free lettuce!

LETTUSSSSS!

These teeny tiny things bloom in our front yard every year!

The raspberries were late to ripen, but they did ripen at last.

Amazing they just grow wild.

We find raspberry patches among the blueberry patches, too. They typically spread via rhizomes, so these isolated bushes must come from bird poop? That is my guess.

The fragrance of labrador tea is a sure sign you are berry picking!

The blues are not as dense this year, but they are still there.

There are still nice dense clusters here and there.

I wore my lucky blueberry bucket earrings!

It's alright, to be little bitty!