A Fabulous End to the Season

According to DH, winter begins now. I usually push my beginning of Winter out to the start of November, but in essence, I agree with him. The end of Renaissance Festival means the end of summer and the beginning of our 2-4 weeks of autumn. But what a wonderful way to go out! We had blue skies and temperatures in the mid to upper 70's yesterday (23.8 C for my centigrade friends). Although I've huddled in double cloaks and watched snow falling from the sky in some other years, this year's last day of Fest was awesome. As icing on the cake, Stary Olsa performed numerous times. We caught two of their performances which were all well attended. They are staying in town until Wednesday morning with a single remaining performance scheduled at St James Catholic Church in Minneapolis tomorrow night. Unfortunately, the time of the performance won't allow me to attend, but I did buy one more CD at Fest.

Stary Olsa was fabulous, as usual. Ilya, the lutenist on the far left, is
so talented. He played two different small lutes and a tenor Renaissance-style
lute. I also loved watching the two percussion players who switched
off on drums all the time. The original players of the group are numbers
1, 2, 4 and 6, the female has been with them for several years, and the
drummer in yellow is quite new, but fits in well. 

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday DH worked hard on the castle walls. Here's what we ended up with at the end of the day on Saturday. The second tier on the southern side is now complete, although he's not altogether happy with the angle of the curve nearest the fence. He might tear that far end out later this week and reset it to a slightly lesser curve.

DH added the full second tier on the south over Thursday, Friday
and Saturday. He also backfilled a lot of the mountains of
dirt he had excavated earlier. It's starting to look really good! 

Less than 100 blocks remain of those five palettes of stone that were delivered to us earlier this summer! It's been quite the project. In the photo below, I am standing on the patio. Next year's schedule is to tear up the patio and lower it 1-3 inches before repaving it with new pavers. With luck, good weather, etc., the back yard project should be complete by this time next year.

Here I'm looking west from the patio level at both sections of the southern
wall. He's not happy with the curve of the second wall closest to
the fence and may tear a short part out to make it gentler. This (minus
the piles of dirt) will be close to what we'll see when the project
is complete. The half-circle directly ahead will hold
our patio table. 

On a final note about Fest, "MaMa" appeared at the Renaissance Festival yesterday as a special surprise and joy. "MaMa" is a popular character. She plays the King's mother - deathly white (almost resurrected from the dead) with a vicious sense of humor and lots of very pointed quips. She's an extraordinary character and doesn't appear often. I loved the skeletal cat she was carrying this year.

"MaMa" is a character who rarely appears and whom I adore seeing. She's
sharp with her tongue, observant with her comments, and loves putting
the King in his place. She seems to escape from the dungeons every so
often. The skeletal cat was new this year and the perfect pet for her. 

Finally, the Ryder Cup came to a close yesterday with the hard fought tournament finally ending in victory for the USA. The traffic going back and forth from Fest, although heavier, wasn't horrific, and the golf itself was really fun to watch in those moments when I saw it. The next match is scheduled for 2018 at the National Course of France in Paris. I've been trying to convince DH that we should go to it, but he claims there are no good golfers from France. (Not sure of the rationale, but it works for him.) Now if it was in Spain ... *sigh* ... we'd probably be at least entertaining the thought - LOL. Happy Monday to all!