Pepe appears to have changed his hours of calling by, for a friendly hello, and what's on for snacks tonight? Midnight used to be his calling time, but lately he's the first one around once night has fallen and the daylight creatures have departed for the night. And he was there on the porch last night, looking out for himself, daintily selecting treats before the big boys come around and fill the porch with their presence.

We saw sun for the first time in a few days this morning. But a cold day, nudging up to 10C, with an icy wind again. Mondays are busy days for us. Today Irving had scheduled an attempt at repairing our kitchen sink faucet which had developed a leak at the spray hose. Yesterday he'd gone out and bought a repair kit meant for the model faucet we have, but discovered this morning that it wouldn't fit our faucet, it was tailored for a later model.

 Not that ours is old, it's only about four years since Irving had installed the current one. Obviously the one we had must have elicited plenty of complaints from others, regarding its durability; the new model is somewhat changed. The spray hose is quite different, and should we need to replace it in future, it will fit the model Irving brought home from Home Depot this morning.

Our usual pattern of house cleaning was in tatters today. I had decided to take advantage of the weather; cool but no rain in the forecast, to get a good start on fall garden clean-up. Mind, I started quite a while ago, filling several bags weekly, usually on Saturdays, to prepare for winter. But there's so much to be done it takes forever. Out I went, on with the garden gloves, out with the secateurs and shears and I went to work. I had decided not to do furniture dusting today, and use that time instead outside.

A perfect day for it too. While it was nippy-cold and windy it was also sunny. And it just felt so invigorating to be out there in the garden saying a fond farewell so so many hostas, hydrangeas, rose canes, cutting back black-eyes Susans and carefully pruning the leaves off tree peonies. It took no time at all to accumulate four large compost bags and just in time to put them out for collection tomorrow morning. 

Irving ran into problems with the plumbing and it took longer than he had anticipated, so once I was back in the house and finished the dry-mopping, I turned to vacuuming the house, after which it was time to wash the floors; bathrooms, foyer, laundry room, breakfast room, and most of the kitchen floor, steering clear of the sink area. 

Jackie and Jillie were so well behaved, patiently waiting, other than the occasional trip out to the backyard. They intuit when everything is finished and they run about excitedly knowing their turn in the ravine is next up. We ended up in the ravine a little later than usual this afternoon. Because it was late I put on a roast and left it in the oven on a low temperature, planning a Yorkshire pudding and green beans to accompany it.

Before we left, though, there was a sudden, surprise downpour. Can't have a day without a rain event, after all. It stopped by the time we headed out, but its time-proximity to our arrival at the forest trails meant that everything was well steeped in rain water. Colours are still vibrant, but more than ever the trees are assuming that November-bare appearance that makes everything look so sere and unbeautiful. 

We were both feeling a little the worse for wear when we set out with two  happy little dogs, but it didn't take long before we felt a whole lot better, winding our way through the forest, swishing through damp, but still crisp leaves, the majority of them shades of gold, fittingly leaving us with the impression we were treading on gold ... and so we were...