Things I Hate.

Things that I find really oppressive right now are the following:

Fruit flies I am at war with fruit flies. I surmise that they are coming in through the screens in the kitchen windows, because right outside the kitchen is our apple orchard (two trees). There is a lot of fallen and rotting fruit, and I believe this is where the flies originate. The compost pail has now moved outside to the deck, which is for the best because it’s a breeding ground for fruit flies, though hubby insists on bringing it inside from time to time and enraging me. There are flies in and around the sink, and flies around our heads while we eat dinner. I bought a trap from Lee Valley Tools but I don’t know how many have fallen for it. They are wiley, those fruit flies.

Threatening wildlife, fattening up for winter Apparently this is the time of year when I have to really worry about fishers, coyotes, etc etc. Cats are starting to go missing, and we all know how I feel about that. My little fatty Sasha sticks close to home most of the time, but she’s started staying out later and later at night, and it makes me nervous. We’ve started enlisting Rosie to go out (on a leash) and find her in the dark.

My slow garden I have tomatoes, they’re just not red yet. I have picked a bunch, and want to bring them inside to ripen, but am terrified of encouraging the abovementioned fruit flies. Any ideas are welcome. I am still waiting on some potatoes (I planted them really late) and am still getting zucchini, but everything else is a wash. I got garlic (whoop, that’s the easiest thing) and onions, and potatoes (which were all floury and terrible), and four carrots which were purple, so I suspect my sister-in-law threw them out when she found them in the fridge. They were meant to be purple but she didn’t know that. I got one plum. At least we will have a wonderful apple harvest. Everything is a giant mess, as it always is at this time of year.

The onset of fall We’re unprepared for fall this year. We don’t have our firewood, let alone have it split and stacked and put away. We haven’t had our chimney cleaned. I haven’t cleaned out the garden. The grass is half-mowed, because our mower died. The car needs repairs, and we need to sell the Saturn station wagon that lives in our driveway which will get us peanuts I’m sure. We sold the blue truck (sniff) and will keep it to the Vibe for the winter, I think. We may need new winter tires (cha-ching). We haven’t done anything regarding our siding this year, though Stuart, our handyman guy, said he’d do it in the fall sometime. However, I haven’t painted any boards for it, and don’t even know how many we’ve got. The trailer is woefully unprepared for the winter onslaught, as we don’t think it can handle 4 feet of snow on top of it, and it’s definitely not mouse-or-water-tight, I’ve learned. I feel like I just pulled the garlic out of the garden and I need to think about weeding it and planting next year’s. I need to buy an extra month somehow. I am anxious just writing this out, and could really use a glass of wine.

Junk I am tired of dealing with all the junk in our house. I keep trying to encourage a clean up day (!! to make it sound fun) but we never seem to get rid of a satisfactory amount of stuff. All the empty spaces fill right back up again. This is why we need a cottage. I keep things around (old kitchen sink, old bottles, etc) because I have plans to put them in a cottage someday, but in the meantime you can’t hardly walk through our basement. This weekend I have to do the ol’ twice-annual clothing switch (summer to winter, boo hoo) and I really want to get hubby to do a major sort in his closet. We need to make space, because it’s getting a bit oppressive, and winter only makes that feeling worse.

However, all of this being said, I am a person with a can-do attitude (ha!) and this list of things that I hate now turns into a list of things to deal with:

- put up sticky traps for fruit flies.
- pick tomatoes, remaining potatoes and onions. Ripen them in a fruit-fly-free locale.
- Buy organic garlic and plant it for next year.
- Rip all the weeds and old plants out of the veggie garden.
- Pick apples.
- Order firewood.
- Split and stack firewood.
- Have chimney cleaned.
- Repair car.
- Sell Saturn.
- Call Stuart.
- Check winter tires.
- Winterize the trailer.
- Clean closets.
- Switch clothes summer/winter.
- Put junk away or throw it out.

I should just keep this list as a template, an annual to-do list, because these tasks are the same from year to year. Fall sucks.