Because we really have not had as much rain as we had last month, my winter rye has taken forever to sprout. I really hope that I do not need to haul hoses.

I went to check on a small vegetable plot I tend for someone else. The entire garden was wall to wall turkeys. They were eating every single rye seed. They were annoyed with me as I tried to chase them away. I wondered if they knew they out-numbered me.

I spent some time speculating how one could grace the Thanksgiving Day table.

Speaking of the big day, this paper will hit the newsstands just as we try to get creative with all those leftovers.

As I mentioned last week, this is when your freezer becomes your friend. A few meals can be frozen to be enjoyed later when life gets in the way of cooking your supper.

It’s a good thing we have a long fall. I finally turned over a couple of beds to get them ready to receive garlic. It was not a small task. I nearly filled a wheel barrel with the roots of the heinous wild morning glory. Some of those roots were as big around as clothesline and feet long. Many had come from under the black plastic weed mat that I use in the paths. How is that even possible?

I spent some time sitting after exhausting myself. I watched the seeds of milkweed floating in the wind. It was so pretty and relaxing. I didn’t care that it’s a crop of next year’s weeds.

A lone white cabbage moth that somehow managed to escape a couple of freezes appeared.

I moved some baby leeks that had reseeded into a new location.

The seed catalogs are beginning to arrive in my mailbox. They didn’t used to come until after Christmas but, honestly, we rush everything nowadays.

Some Christmas stuff starts appearing around Halloween. Why don’t we simply put Santa costumes on the skeletons and ghosts in the yards?

While at the Vineyard Haven post office, a Hitchcockian amount of crows gave me pause.

Some of us speculated they are diving into neighboring dumpsters, others say they come over with the boat. I saw so many in the back of a truck that the contents were hidden. Probably some fisherman, who knows?

I’m fond of crows. they seem so smart and always have a large community. They keep all the roads clean after some critter fails to cross successfully.

Once, I saw one leaving my chicken coop with an entire egg in its beak. Granted, it was irritating but nonetheless impressive.

I was saddened this week by the death of Rosalynn Carter. She and Jimmy were the embodiment of public service. They lost their positions of power after one term in the White House but went on to serve and love their fellow man as actual Christians are called to do.

Too bad that another one-term president cannot muster up some of that altruism, especially with all that support from the right-wing evangelicals. Then again, Jesus is probably too “woke” for them.