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From Saturday evening, here’s another example of the beautiful light that makes everything look like a J.F. Cropsey painting.

When we woke up this morning, there was frost on the high grass.  We returned to New York early to watch the marathon.

We were not expecting to have the season’s first blizzard before Halloween.

It started innocently enough.

Then it snowed harder and harder.

By late afternoon we had a full-blown Nor’Easter.  It’s awful to have wet, heavy snow while the trees still have their leaves, particularly given how wet the ground has been — there’s just too much weight.  I spent a good chunk of the evening pushing snow out of trees with a rake.

When we woke up, we had at least eight inches of snow and no electricity.  Still, it was very pretty.

Del Wolcott and Chuck Kelsoe came over to help us get the generators started.

Now we’ll have to clean up the mess.

For Sarah, possibly the best part of soccer is the post-practice ice pop with her friends and teammates Sophie and Michaela.

Back at home, the supposedly wild animals are getting entirely too comfortable.  On Saturday we found two deer napping on the lawn.

And on Sunday we found these two squirrels hanging out on the porch.

Clearly they didn’t get the memo: we’ve had two casualties in the last three weeks.

We haven’t had a frost yet, and flowers continue to bloom in Jen’s garden.

Yet it is peak leaf-peeping season.

On Saturday we cleaned out our car, now officially totaled.

Before soccer practice, Sarah gathered some of the prettier leaves from the yard.

Our biennial hickory nut harvest is upon us.

We’ve gotten a bit smarter: we now know which trees produce the biggest nuts with the thinnest shells, and we’ve also learned that gathering two bushels of nuts is useful only if your goal is to have mice that look like Alex Rodriguez.

Sarah maintains a laser-like focus on quality control.

On Saturday night, we heated up the heirloom deep-fat fryer for home-made french fries.

And on Sunday we took advantage of the beautiful weather to go for a walk, on which Sarah and Jen captured a frog.

He was not a large frog.

It was an old Colgate joke that upstate New York might not have much of a climate, but at least it had plenty of weather.

That’s what we had this weekend: Sarah’s soccer game was rained out on Saturday, and it also rained on Sunday, but in between we had flashes of beautiful fall weather.

During one sunny stretch, we seized the opportunity by going for a walk.

With all the rain we’ve been having, the stream that runs out of the pond was about as full as we’ve seen it.

Sarah befriended a late-departing monarch.

She also caught a couple of grasshoppers.

Here she is with one of the rather large tires of the cherry-picker Central Hudson was using to trim trees around the power lines.

Tonight we subtracted from the sum of deer in Dutchess County.  Everyone is safe and sound (except for the deer, and, perhaps, our car).  We’ll spend the night at the farm and try again in the morning.

Today we hosted the Landsman Kill Trail Association’s Fall Trail Ride.  About fifty horses and riders took part.

Sarah fed a peppermint to Tequila Sunrise (“Sunny”), a 19 year-old who, as a two and three year-old, ran at Belmont and Saratoga, with a couple of second-place finishes.

We took advantage of the spectacular weather today — about 68 degrees, sunny and dry — to go for a long walk.  In Jen’s bag are some wild grapes and the first of the hickory nuts.

Sarah and Jen caught a frog …

… but they couldn’t keep him for long.

On Saturday, we retrieved Sarah’s picture and blue ribbon from the Dutchess County Fair.  We also picked up my pickles, which were uneaten.  The judges couldn’t open the jar.

They had some kind words for Jen’s black raspberry jam, although, oddly, they do not seem much concerned with flavor.

We were very excited to find this check in the mailbox Saturday morning.  It’s Sarah’s award for winning first place in the children’s landscape competition for the picture — a view of the pond — she entered in the Dutchess County Fair.  Now we have to figure out how to retrieve her blue ribbon.

Sarah’s soccer league started its fall season this weekend.  Here she is scrimmaging against the Green Hornets.  While she was playing, a bald eagle flew overhead, but I did not manage to get its picture.

We are still getting plenty of tomatoes, in all shapes, sizes and colors.