Chillin' with Chili and Fallen Bugs and Leaves

With the autumnal temperatures and leaves blowing down from the trees causing me to yearn for hot meals, I made a spur of the moment decision and invited some friends to come to Meadow House for chili around the fire pit.  Friday night was spent filling my largest saucepans with 6lbs of local beef and veggies and then after cooking, leaving them overnight in the fridge for the flavors to marinade. Chili is always better the day after cooking.

The house was suitably festive but I had to rake leaves in the fire pit area, not wanting anything combustible around the seating area other then the wood in the fire pit itself.

Steve and Kelly arrived and we made some valiant attempts to fly our kites, but with little success. I think both kites got off the ground for about 15 seconds each, so we gave up and consoled ourselves with a beer. The Urbexia crowd arrived with both Richard and Margie attending after already having spent busy days, God bless them, and Jeff from Centreville came too.

We had a great group and I was extremely pleased to see that by the end of the evening most of the chili had been consumed. Lewis had brought a superb apple dessert from the local Red Truck Bakery
and with mulled cider shot with vodka, all bellies were filled and warmed. It was a fun evening and lovely to see some friends who I'd not seen for a while.
The next day I had planned to 'bomb' the house. I have to accept that, living in rural conditions with trees close to the house, I will get a lot of insect visitors. For the most part I put up with this and have evicted stink bugs, lady bugs, stick insects, daddy long legs, moths, butterflies and even snakes out of my home but the last straw was seeing a wolf spider making himself very comfortable in my bookshelf. I don't like wolf spiders and will even admit that I'm frightened of them. They are not friendly and never show any signs of acceptance of other creatures so I didn't want him in the house, and I was done with the constant cobwebs appearing on my coat rack and under chairs and tables, so I decided this was the last straw. It was just going to be me, Kota and Rosie Lee living in this house through the winter.
It was a little blustery and I felt a little guilty throwing Kota and Rosie outside for the 4 hours the bombs needed to work, but I propped open the shed door for them and then left with a camera to take some photos of the fall colors before they all turned to brown. I returned promptly and not seeing any cats about I quickly ran indoors and opened all the windows to clear the air in the house. I had to leave it for another 30 minutes so went back outside with my camera wondering why Kota hadn't been there to greet me. And then I noticed that the bakery door was open. I walked in calling Kota's name and then went upstairs to Maggi's office. There was Kota, looking nice and cozy snuggled up on the sofa. So now he's learned to open doors as Maggi never leaves that door open due to previous damage caused by bears attracted to the bakery smells.. He greeted me and came willingly for a walk around the grounds. As we later wandered back to the house Rosie Lee appeared and we all went indoors. There were plenty of dead insects, including the wolf spider. The next couple of hours were spent vacuuming and washing all kitchen ware but finally I sat down with a very large glass of red in front of a blazing fire to edit my photos, with a cat either side of me on the sofa, and feeling very content that for the first time in ages, it was just the three of us in the house, with no uninvited lodgers.