Cooling down period

We went through a major heat wave last week, which I hear much of the rest of the country is getting blasted with right now. Our weather turned cool on Saturday, making it start to feel like fall. I picked the last of my apples and have a giant bowl of them sitting on my table, waiting to be turned into apple butter. The fig harvest is also winding down.

I spent most of yesterday working on setting up a raised bed in my front yard. I had things planted there before, but with only a small wire fence loosely delineating it, it looked kind of messy. It actually looks nice now. I planted it with beets, daikon radishes, garlic, onions, carrots, and peas. (Since it butts up against the public sidewalk, I try to keep it mostly filled with root vegetables, so if any passing dogs pee on it, they don't hit the actual food.)

I had planned to work on fall pruning, but it was so windy on Saturday with the rapid temperature change, I stayed indoors the whole afternoon and didn't have time to work on it. I did a lot of knitting instead. I've finished a pair of orange socks that I plan to wear to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival in a few weeks. I'm also knitting several pairs of socks for my nephew's birthday coming up in November. Most sock patterns are written for adults, so it takes some adjusting to get the sizing right. I've finished the first pair and am now working on the second.

I'm hoping to work on decluttering my house more over the fall and winter. I've culled several boxes of board games that I'm planning to offer for sale at a local board game convention in November. (My shelves are still full, but at least there are fewer stacks of games on the floor now...) I also need to get to work on the dozens of boxes of old VHS tapes filling two whole closets in my game room. I've got that project slated for right after I empty out my DVR, and I'm making progress on that. Then I'll have to cull manga again...