First Frost

 

Someone's horse all ready for the coming season

The latest I can remember, one full week after the usual on the 12th. Hard ice on the car windows....brrr.

Now we will have to dig the cannas, a job I heartily dread. I have bad knees and hard shoveling is terribly unkind to them. However, their high-flung red flowers, feet above my head, are like magnets to hummingbirds, and beautiful to boot. Also I need to plant some garlic in one of the rows.

It won't be long now

Been putting up plastic and the like over leaking windows and doors and in the course of so doing found out why my bedside sheepskin became so moth-eaten as to need to be tossed out.

See, last spring we found flying squirrels, mama and babies, living in the closed off space between the windows and the plastic in our bedroom. They were cute and tame, and Liz caught them all and released them in a more appropriate environment...that is to say, outdoors.

Anyhow, down behind the chest next to the window, I found a sweet little nest, round and fluffy and golden....not to mention woolen...made up of curls from my bedside rug.

Dagnabbit. I've had that rug for nearly forty years. And I never heard them pillaging it as I slept. Unless maybe they did it in the daytime. Wretched creatures.

Redhead

Best birds of recent weeks were Surf Scoters in two counties, plus a Redhead duck with one set of scoters. Redheads are usually late winter/early spring ducks for us, but this lovely male has been hanging around Lock 12 for at least a week.

Also the flotillas of sparrows of various sorts eating weed seeds in the yards have been quite entertaining. I marvel at the variations in color in the Song Sparrows. From pale tan through rich honeyed golden tones, to cinnamon and chocolate. No wonder people have trouble identifying them...myself included sometimes, although I am getting better. And there are a LOT of White-throated Sparrows around, at least twenty each morning. They often come in to the feeder when it still dark and then disperse out into the fields for the day.

Anyhow, the growing season is done for us, hopefully the yellow jackets as well. They seem to love me and want to get all too friendly. Happy Fall to all.

This ewe is ready for the season,
Sporting a fashionable jacket of fun fall grasses

Well, actually, the sheep ate the center of the round bale first
and it appears that some of the outside fell on her.

Iris was unconcerned and enjoyed her newfound popularity