Sarah posted a blog today commenting on the supposed end of autumn. That seems to be a bunch of nonsense, at least in Vermont, where winter has arrived. After a long day of torrential rain, it's actively snowing here in VT, with accumulation. Terrifying.

The house, however, is rapidly approaching winter readiness. While I haven't taken good pictures this week, I will (hopefully) remedy that this weekend. Joe and Randy Brown (our neighbor and masonry contractor) are in a mad race to see who can finish their respective heating installation first. Randy has now gotten the chimney up into a new whole in our roof, and will soon begin work on a field stone backsplash and hearth in our living room. My dad delivered us up a new (used) woodstove last weekend, and we have a few cords of chopped, dry wood on the premises. Meanwhile, Joe has mounted our furnace, and done all the copper plumbing involved to get hot water circulating to the raditors on the first floor of the house. He has previously dug a large pit beside the house, in which a giant propane tank nows resides, and backfilled the hole. He's ready to mount our first floor raditors and run the hot water supply lines to them. It seems that soon we will have more heat than we know what to do with. Which is good, since it dips below freezing on more nights than not nowadays.

MEANWHILE, Eric, Julie and I, with significant technical support from Joe, have been blazing away at the siding. We have now largely sided and stained three sides of the house, and are ready to focus our efforts on the west side of the building. Our goal is to finish it up for good before we experience freezing DAYtime temperatures. God forbid.