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Coming into late October -- 10/24/11 |
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We're coming into late October now. Halloween is only a week away. Until our modern age, this would be a busy time of year for the folk who lived around here, preparing for winter.. the harvest brought in, meat salted and preserved, canning and drying produce, filling root cellars... all of that pre-supermarket stuff. Even in this modern age, there are a lot of chores that need to be done. We took down the canvas roof and screen sides from our back deck -- actually, we took them down extra early this year in preparation for Hurricane Irene. Garden tools need to be cleaned up and put away, wood needs to be split to feed our wood-burning insert in our living room fireplace. (Sometimes I think the hassles of winter are worth putting up with because of the enjoyment of sitting by a nice fire.) I sometimes refer to our area as being suburban, but it really isn't. That is, there is no urban area to which we are the suburb. There is another entire county and two towns between the City of Providence and the town we live in. In fact, we have the largest population of the nine towns in our county. It's just that -- outside of some areas in our villages that date back to the 19th century or even back to colonial times, a majority of our residential areas have the look and feel of post World War II suburbs. Although our town is larger in population than the city I grew up in, it is spread out over a much larger area and definitely feels like a small town. By the way, our county is the largest county in the state -- and it is also the smallest largest county in the country. That is, we live in the largest county in land area in Rhode Island, but we are smaller than the largest county in each of the other 49 states. (Of course many of those counties are larger than our entire state.) The following photograph is especially for Jill -- it is to prove to her that we actually got the garage so organized that I was able to put my car in it last night.
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