Journal: October 17. Sam visits and scrapes.

The cold is continuing.  Sam has arrived for the day.  I picked him up in Sparta at 11am. 

We had big plans for garden preparation and assorted tasks, and he did do some reconnaissance work in the garden. 

But it was more a day of rest.  We did spend a few hours scraping, but I am slowly beginning to think that is a fool's project.  At the rate we remove the many layers of old paint, it would take months to get the floor ready to paint.

Instead, we walked around the lake.  The leaves are providing a fine fall display.  

And, of course, we did have two fine meals--a breakfast of eggs poached in tomato sauce, topped with feta and a dinner of chicken with couscous and a north african vegetable stew--also acorn squash with a cilantro-lime-garlic vinaigrette.