The lawn mower is a distant "brrrrr" in the past, replaced by the new "brrrrr" of cold weather. We cater to our feathered friends with a variety of feeders and a heated birdbath.
Think of it as a hottub for our feathered friends (and the occasional odd squirrel!)
Most of the leaves are off the trees, but we've still got berries everywhere for the birds to eat. These little guys belong to the Euonymus we have growing in the beds off the back patios.
Out in the front LipsYard, the Hawthorne (Craetagus phaenopyrum) is having one of it's first bearing years.
And out back, the Snowdrift Crabapple (Malus Snowdrift) still has fruit available.
On the flipside of the fruit available coin, are the opportunities for the Bush administration to salvage any kind of positive legacy for his 8 years in office, so he's had Condi put together a big Mid-East conference to try to get peace to break out between Israel and Palestine. "I'm optimistic" says our president. Good Luck with that.
Thanksgiving morning brought us the first snow of the season. The Witchhazel (Hamamelis vernalis) featured on Wednesday at the edge of our green lawn, is now surrounded by a white blanket. No shoveling needed on this day, as it didn't stick to pavement, but we are going to gas up the 8hp blower and make sure it's running fine.
The LipsYard neighborhood is pretty stable, but over the last couple of years, there has been a steady turnover of home-owners. Across the street from us are Mary and Jim. Nothing unusual about picking up leaves this time of year, except Jim has always had "People" do his yard work. Imagine our surprise to see them out doing it themselves.
Jim told me "I found out they wanted money to do this!" Plus, he had just got a new Black and Decker "bad boy" leaf sucker and had to try it out.
An hour or so later, he had changed his tune to "They're called leaves because you're supposed to leave them on the ground." Mary wasn't buying it.
President Bush is going to have another new cubicle neighbor, as another rat has jumped ship. This time it's Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend, the leading White House-based terrorism adviser who gave public updates on the extent of the threat to U.S. security. She's stepping down after 4 1/2 years.
Townsend said she hates to leave when figures like Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, remain at large. "Do I wish that I was going to be standing here when they are captured or killed? Absolutely. But I have no doubt that we will ultimately be successful."
Her departure continues an exodus of key Bush aides and confidants, with his two-term presidency in the final 15 months. Top aide Karl Rove, along with press secretary Tony Snow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior presidential adviser Dan Bartlett, have already left. It wouldn't be too much of a bet to say she won't be the last, either.
Here we are at Sentry Hy. 100 and National for our Family to Family Thanksgiving "Live Drive" to help provide a great Thanksgiving meal for those less fortunate families around us.
This is Tyler, and he was here shopping with his mom and sister. His favorite part of Thanksgiving are the drumsticks. Mine is stuffing and gravy.
This is Elizabeth, Benjamin, and Nathan (I'm pointing at him, he's a corn and carrots kid) who had their mom bring them in from Brookfield to make a donation for Family to Family Thanksgiving.
Jane from Aurora Family Service explains how they don't just give food to families in need, but also follow up to find out other areas that they can offer assistance in.
Carly from St. Alphonsus school drops off the donation from the chore-drive
For 11 years the Dept. 56 collectors club of Milwaukee has made a donation and this year is no different.
Another annual donor, and our largest to date, is Quarles and Brady, brought by $12,000! Laurie and Dayle tell us they've given over $99,000 over the years.
Kathy from Deloitte dropped by their annual donation, this year nearly $4,000! They've been with our program for 10 years.
During our annual furnace check at the start of the heating season, we got the bad news that our old Lennox Pulse furnace had a bad combustion chamber, and had become a carbon monoxide hazzard (do you have a working CO detector?)
Out with the old...
...and off the truck with the new. This Lennox is a step up from the old Pulse model. It is 95% efficient compared to 92% on the old one, so it will use less natural gas. It also has a DC fan motor that is much more efficient than the old AC model.
First job is to cut a hole in the side for the air intake SpaceGuard filter.
The new furnace is more compact than the old.
Here it is ready to heat our home to a brisk 69 degrees.
We opted to upgrade because of the Bush Administration's energy policy: "Find more - Use more - raise the prices for our business buddies." Energy Czar Cheney pooh poohs conservation, probably thinking it's for "ninnys," and pushes ahead for more drilling in wildlife refuges.
The price of oil has gone from $25 a barrel at the start of the "W" regime, to nearly $100 today. With the neocon's set to attack Iran, prices will only go higher.
"Ninnys" that we are at the LipsYard house, we've opted to the conservation side of the equation, and hope you will, too, when your Old Paint needs replacing.
Every Green Thursday, we post issues vital to the future of the planet.
Goldmound (Spiraea) on 'fire' in the LipsYard. That wacky purply Kale (Brassica oleracea) is looking good, too.
We have Spiraea in several beds around the house, providing green color and blooms all spring and summer, and beautiful color in the fall.
At the LipsYard House, we wait for a frosty Fall morning to spread our Winterizer on the lawn. That's so we can see where we've been with the drop spreader. 
This will be the 2nd time we've used the new "No Phosphorus" product on the lawn.
That's why the middle number on the bag is '0.' Here in Wisconsin, the ground is silly with Phosphorus, so we don't need to add any more.
Great Brittain has joined a Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group 10 day ultimatum for him to end emergency rule and quit as army chief. What have we done? Nothing. The Bush administration continues to seek a delicate balance; criticizing Musharraf's crackdown on basic freedoms, but standing up for him as a vital ally against terrorism who has shown support for democracy (up to now.) Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was headed to Pakistan to urge him to cut it out. Good luck with that.
Jordin Sparks, the latest American Idol, stops by the WKTI studios to talk about winning the big show. Click Jordan's picture above to watch the interview!
The 17-year-old Sparks is very poised and outgoing. She credits her parents for supporting her dreams of being a singer, and giving her the freedom and independence to learn things on her own.
She doesn't have a Tatoo (the title of her hit song) yet, but as soon as she turns 18, she'll have her brother's initials, PJ, inked behind her right ear (ouch!)
Jordin signed our white board on the way out.
We're almost totally paperless in the LipsYard house, and it saves on buying stamps, too.
This year, the award for "last producing plant standing" in the LipsYard garden goes to: Swiss Chard! (Beta vulgaris) Everything else has been touched by frost, or dug up long ago.
They come from this tree on Rex's yard next door. and there are still a lot up there.
Handy dandy tool time: The Toro leaf vacuum. We prefer to suck ours up, rather than blow them around.
The bag gets emptied onto the LipsYard garden, to be tilled into the soil so it can decompose all winter long.
Those that didn't fit in the garden go into the mulch bin, to be mixed with green garden and lawn waste for next season.
Global Warming has finally given way to frost in the LipsYard.
This Carefree Beauty shrub rose (Rosa 'BUCbi') lowers it's blooms in deference to the cold.
Our frost is like the chill that has come over the Capitol Hill hearings for Attorney General candidate Michael Mukasey. He was all on board the open, honest, non-political track until Uncle Dick and the neo-con gang at the White House had a chat with him. Now his opinions on whether 'waterboarding' is torture (duh!) are a matter of national security. Unfortunately, the Democrats will cave in on this issue and ultimately approve him for the post. On the bright side, he'd have to work pretty hard in the wrong direction to be as bad as our last AG.
