We're all waiting for the sunshine this morning. The forecasters have "sort of" predicted some sun today, and right now it looks promising, but earlier this morning we were enveloped in fog - a typical late August/early September morn. A few minutes ago Woody (our cat) came in wet and enjoyed his usual rub-down with a paper towel. I don't know if he was wet from prowling about in the tall grass and bushes hereabouts or it there was actually some rain when I wasn't looking. There was a definite mist in the air when I went out to read the rain guage this morning, and I reported .07 inches of precip to CoCoRaHS. Somebody asked me the other day what CoCoRaHS stands for, and I couldn't get it all at the time, but later I looked it up and it is short for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network, which is all volunteer, headquartered at Colorado State University, and is part of NOAA, the National Weather Service, and National Hydrologic Council. It's a mouthful, but I don't have to worry about it - all I do take my reading and report it. The information I send gets put in with reports from all over the country (there are a lot of reporters here in Vermont) and help scientists to recognize changes in weather patterns, etc.

We've finally finished painting our tractor garage - except I have to paint the two hinges on the gable door black, since we didn't bother to remove them like we did the hinges on the big doors. I'll get to that this week, if the weather holds, and may even reglaze the window on the south side. At least we got the doors to close again, and filled some of the holes blasted out when my father was shooting at the pesky squirrels. There are lots of embedded bb's in the clapboards of that old shed . . . my father would have appreciated Woody's efforts to keep the area clear of red squirrels.

Now we're in the process of clearing out unwanted, unused "stuff" that has accumulated over the years. Much of it was my father's, and things my mother collected, like an old fashioned milk can she was going to paint, and some wooden sap buckets she used to hold plants. Then there is the stuff Fred and I have collected, like the metal sap buckets, covers and spouts from when we tried making our own maple syrup. We made syrup for a couple years, but it was way too much work when we were both working, collecting on foot, and boiling it on the kitchen stove. We sensibly decided we could probably buy it for less than the amount our electric bill jumped, so stacked the buckets and covers thinking we might want to do it again after we retired, but now we're too busy. Besides, we have neighbors all around us who make great maple syrup.

The fall cleaning spree will last for a few more weeks with lots of trips to recycle what nobody wants. I find it's lots more fun to clean out Fred's tractor garage than it is to do any of the half dozen storage spaces I have my overflow of "stuff" in, but I admit that for the moment, at least, I'm inspired and perhaps I'll get some of my useless treasures cleaned out, too.

Here comes the sun! Time to go to work.