31 October, 2021.

Trick or treat? Must be a trick, I suppose! Three beans – that’s all my pole beans could muster this year: just three beans.

I planted them in late May or early June, along with several hills of bush beans. The latter went crazy and I harvested three times before they petered out. The pole beans, on the other hand, grew long and tall and leafy. But nary a blossom was to be seen.

A couple of vines died early, while the remaining plants simply existed and I eventually forgot them – or perhaps I simply ignored them.

I was standing indoors, looking out on the back yard a couple days ago, pondering the autumn that has descended upon us. The leaves are falling now, and I was debating when I will need to bring the plants back indoors. I glanced toward the pole beans, and to my shock there was a bean dangling from one of the vines! As it turned out, there were three.

And that’s it. No more. The weather is getting much cooler, and I can’t imagine more beans will come before Mother Nature turns down the thermostat for real.

30 October, 2021.

Grandsons leave chaos in their wake. Legos and toy fire trucks in the living room, piles of sticks for no reason whatsoever on the back patio, pots and pans dragged out and littered across the kitchen floor, and bikes and wagons and all sorts of garage debris cluttering up the drive.

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28 October, 2021.

It’s a four-door, most people want a 60s muscle car in a two door, but it looks original and is not too bad condition, and it’s sitting in a storage facility, outdoors, among a whole bunch ofwinnebagos and pop up trailers and Airstreams.

27 October, 2021.

I’ve been waiting for this event for several months now, this bicycle swap meet. I have tons of vintage parts cluttering up storage in my studio and wanted to see if I could find some new owners for those things.It’s always a danger for me, because there’s always some collectible item that catches my eye it seems. It would be so easy to take home more rather than less!

This was no exception, of course. A fairly rare racing bicycle caught my eye and it was priced right… And it was my size, too! Thank goodness someone else came along and laid down the asking price before I did.

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26 October, 2021.

Now here’s a product I am kind of excited about. The Derwent Lightfast colored pencil set is a kit of 72 pencils in a wide range of colors. The pencils are a standard size that anyone who uses a number two will be familiar with. Color goes down smooth and almost creamy, and they blend nicely. According to the literature, these have an oil base and can be dissolved with a solvent. I haven’t tried that yet – and I don’t know if I will, actually. Solvents make me nervous and they are the reason I gave up oil painting a decade and a half ago.

I’ve only just begun to play around with these so I can’t offer any useful critique yet, only a couple observations. The ends of the pencils are color-coded and I do wish the entire pencil had that color treatment to make finding them a little easier. I’ll probably store mine in the tin case they came in until the thin plastic insert wears out… which may not take long. It doesn’t appear to be especially robust. The pencils themselves appear to be of superior quality though.

25 October, 2021.

We are not a patient bunch, we Americans. To be much more precise, I am not a patient person, which is the one and only reason I exhale loudly when I arrive at the airport.

29 October, 2021.

Tacos. Need I say more?

24 October, 2021.

I see these rusting old hulks and can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like to drive them around when they were fresh off the line.

23 October, 2021.

Oh man. Late on a Sunday night, the last flight out in fact, and it’s been delayed. I’m hungry and nothing is open except McDonald’s – and the line is exceptionally long.

22 October, 2021.

That’s a lotta truck!