Settling into fall here in Mahoosuc Mills: pumpkins and apple cider, polar fleece on my morning walk. I’ve kind of lost interest in watering my mums. And when the sun shines, doesn’t everything seem to pop with color? Yellow and orange leaves against blue sky, dry leaves scattered on the ground, smelling of fall. Seems like this time of year all the little flying and crawly creatures want to come inside. Every time I turn around, there’s another spider in the corner, lady bugs and the dreaded stink bugs on the walls. Where do they all come from? And wasps! For some reason, we have more than our fair share of these buggers in our …

Holy guacamole! It’s October! People are buy pumpkins and soon they’ll be carving them. Can turkey with all the fixin’s and the fat guy in the red suit be far away? This year, Charlie and me are hoping to go the Topsfield Fair, down in Massachusetts, and check out their Giant Pumpkin Contest. We’ve never been, and I think it’s high time we do. I’ll keep you posted. Our neighbor Gretchen made us aware of this contest a few years ago, when she followed her passion and grew a giant pumpkin. That baby was something to behold. Godzilla, they called it, and it topped out at just under four hundred pounds. Gretchen says that’s small …