Almost

It nearly froze last night. A couple of degrees and it would have. I hustled around all yesterday afternoon bringing some of the house plants indoors and covering up others. Some lacy tablecloths are out there this morning, none of them woven by spiders.

It is so obviously fall...

All day long you can hear the patter of leaves falling and the louder, more insistent patter of woodpeckers, chickadees, and nuthatches hammering at the honey locust pods. I don't know whether they seek the fat beans inside or insects that may infest same, but the sound never stops while the sun is up.

Canada Geese took wing today, over a hundred passing through during my morning bird count. They add their mournful calls to the rustling and shuffling of wings and the ring of Blue Jay calls that mark these cold fall mornings.

Caught three of the four guppies yesterday and brought them in. Number 4 is going to be sorry.

Debating on the plants that are still outdoors. All the memorial plants are in. The Ida Hollenbeck memorial spider plant, all of the Grandma Peggy plants, except for two foxtail ferns I grew from seeds off her original one, which stayed indoors this summer, and the big split leaf philodendron from a get-well bouquet of someone I knew in the seventies. My first ever plant, a Christmas cactus my mother gave me is in. I was eighteen and still living at home when she gave it to me.....

The two-year old datil pepper is in....and covered with little orange peppers. No one seems to quite get why I feel it is such an accomplishment to keep this St. Augustine native growing here in the cold Northeast, but I do love having it. Can I keep it over one more winter? I sure hope so. 

My sister-in-law's pothos are both in but kind of grumpy. The one that spent the summer on the sitting porch seemed to like it out there and it is not admiring the kitchen window much. It took me a while, but I finally got the hang of them.

Gift plants from son and daughters are in. Aunt Ann's giant wandering Jew is in. It did well this summer, after I got serious with the Miracle Grow. Should I bring the cuphea in? I love the little thing, but they are so prone to bugs and disease....guess I will have to decide this afternoon whether to gamble or not.

The geraniums will probably weather a degree or two of frost and we really are only supposed to get close to that tonight. I hate to lose them as I grew most of them from seed, but I would also like to leave them out a couple more weeks, as it is supposed to warm back up.

And....last but not least....the boss turned the heat on in the furnace plenum this morning. Feels good too.

Migration Madness

What were they? I was watching a gratuitous flyover Bald Eagle this morning. He came over low enough to be photographed from the porch without even leaving my chair. Then he sailed slowly, almost ponderously, higher and higher into the dramatic cumulus clouds that soared to the zenith, until he was little more than a lateral speck.

If you look very closely you can see the black speck that is the eagle,
 just a little below the top/center of the cloud. If you click and enlarge the pic you can see him
maybe......

As I watched him to and fro-ing, a few blackbirds scattered into the view field and then very high and far, just a little too far for my binoculars, there they were, sailing right under those same clouds.

They were white. There were six of them. They were not any bird that flies with neck outstretched like a goose or swan. They were heron-sized, but going away, so i could not quite get an outline. The wings were long enough to note the deep curve when they reached the bottom of their slow, heavy wing beat.

Great Egrets? Maybe. I don't know what else looks like that  might be here, but even though I was counting I won't count them....if only I had not been watching the eagle and had seen them sooner.

Meanwhile, here's what I saw over a couple of hours of counting without leaving the driveway around the house and down to the road. I try to go out for an hour every morning, but today I got carried away.

Grey Catbird 4
Northern Flicker 2
Blue Jay 4
American Goldfinch 10
European Starling 11
Tufted Titmouse  2
Black-capped Chickadee 9
Rock Pigeon 2
Mourning Dove 2
Hairy Woodpecker 1
Downy Woodpecker 3
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
House Sparrow 3
American Robin 4
Song Sparrow 2
Wilson's Warbler 2
Eastern Phobe 1
Red-winged Blackbird 7
Cedar Waxwing 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Common Grackle 4
Bald Eagle

And I didn't even go to the barn. Ain't migration wonderful?!?

Black-throated Green Warbler from yesterday

A rare migrant wanna be.......a mama bird on a snowmobile....
probably as close as she will ever get to actually riding one.

Equinox

So the switch has flipped and it is fall, even though nature has been dabbling her toes in autumn since way too early in August.

It's official now, and it's supposed to get pretty chilly this weekend.

Each morning count of the morning glories may be the last, so I number with great gusto. Ten some days. Eleven others. Sometimes only eight but never quite twelve. All lovely faded denim blue and each almost as big as a saucer. I shouldn't gloat as I did not make them but......

The warblers are still around, the same Black-throated Green each day in the same place in the same cottonwood tree. Saw some Prairies yesterday, none today, but one lone, lamenting, Common Yellowthroat sang a fragment of a fragile song when I went out on the porch for part of my one-hour morning count.

More jelly cooking today, so Liz and I will be busy. One batch is done already. She brought home some green grapes and they make the tangiest jelly in the prettiest pink. I like them much better than purple grapes in jelly.

Sure was a misery trying to sleep last night with the races to the west going on. We can barely hear the regular speedway most of the time, but last night the other one sounded as if they were racing in the driveway under the window. I finally turned on a fan and an audio book to at least diffuse them a bit. Us old folks need our rest you know. 

When I finally did get some sleep I sure had some crazy dreams. I dreamed we visited one of my particular friends who happens to live well inland and did some serious birding...she is a serious birder....and also watched sea lions hunting herring outside the picture window in their garage.

Yup. Ain't been smokin' nuttin strange, but dang....

Back to the jelly.

Harvest Help

Plenty of willing workers around the place.

Food on the Farm

Yellow tomato sauce to freeze for winter

Red ditto

Bizzy Lizzie

Birdin' and Jammin'

When the weather radar shows big blue sunbursts of migratory birds taking off early in the morning, right within fifty miles of your home, it's a good time to go birding.

It has been amazing around here this week! I didn't think I was going to crack 80 species this year...so many common, counted-every-year birds have been absent. 

Swamp Sparrow, species #81 for the year

However, now that migration is really moving the yards are full of birds, just full. Picked up three new ones in the past two days, Black-throated Green Warbler, Prairie Warbler, and Swamp Sparrow, to crack 80 and even hit 81. I sure would like to see a record this year so i go out every morning at least for a few minutes.

And, of course, it is also the season of putting by. Three batches of grape jelly the other day and Liz is busy freezing squash and tomato sauce and such. Big pumpkins are forming up in the top garden, the last flowers are blazing. We use fresh herbs with a lavish hand. they are so good and soon will be so gone. I keep a few indoors, but it is a job to keep them growing.

Frost soon, alas. 

Duck, Duck, Goose

First the duck. The white on this duck is actually white, not an artifact of the light in the photo. I have put it up on every bird group I belong to and no one has ventured a suggestion of what it might be. Leucistic something or other or some kind of duck we don't recognize? any ideas?

It was hanging with a bunch of Blue-wined Teal.

And then the goose....er......geese.....as you may guess we went up to Montezuma Sunday, before visiting Sundae on the Farm later in the day.

And finally....swan lake

Something is A Mist

Each morning seems to bring ever-thicker mist, until this morning all was blanketed with fog so dense you could barely see the dog on the lawn. 

Things are different when the air is clogged with water vapor. The other night, just before the moon was full, I paused a moment on the stair landing to look out the window there. It was just beyond midnight, right after the witching hour, deep into the time of spooks and owls and strangeness.

The night's mist was just falling, here and there a faint cloud with rounded edges drifting down between the buildings and blanketing the trees.

 With the light of the moon shining down upon it, it was as if the air was full of silver glitter.

I was struck with awe and stunned to stillness there in the middle of the stairway. How do you store such treasure?

I often think of Kenny in My Friend Flicka when I pause on that stairway to look out the magic window. He often found himself in trouble for lingering on the stair landing daydreaming..... and I spend more time than I should....every single time, up or down...... looking out at sunset or moonset or mistrise or early-birdtime. 

Or at snow piling up around the buildings and shrouding weathered boards and rusty tin roofs in pretty Christmas wrapping, hiding the defects, redrawing it all, postcard pretty.

 I hate it when we have to cover it with plastic once it gets really cold and the winds get to howling.

Meanwhile, as fall moves along toward those painful days.....

Each morning I go out into the mist before the sun is all the way up to walk the dogs and count the morning glories and listen to the Carolina Wren proclaiming ownership of all surveyed.

This morning there was mystery barking until I finally went out again to see what was what, only to come face-to-face with a monstrous-huge grey squirrel striding over to the house.

Yowsa, he's a big 'un!

And then the mist burns off, the day moves on, and it is as if it never happened until midnight comes again.

Happy Birthday, Mama

I'd give you the moon......if I could just reach it......Love you!

Reciprocity

As was expected under USDA changes, Brazil can now send fresh beef to the United States, a move that will probably  open other markets, such as Japan, to them.

Besides concerns about Foot and Mouth disease, which is endemic in that nation, USDA has admitted that at least in the short term, there is little likelihood of reciprocity in markets, as Brazil dumps an expected NINE_HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS worth of beef on our markets.

In return we get....$900 million worth of their meat in competition with our own farmers and ranchers, a chance to share a devastating disease........and not much else.

Hooray..... Do you miss COOL yet?

Another Memory

People here in Upstate New York tend to have strong memories of 911. I remember way too well, the way it was and the days afterward, the horror, the skies without planes and the tracks without trains, the eerie silence of the valley.

I remember emailing back and forth with my then editor...whom I still miss btw...about how one of the planes turned off course over the very city where this memorial stands, on the new bridge from the other night's walk. Thus it's no surprise that we honor our memorials. 

Riverwalk

Family folks invited the boss and me for a moonlit walk across the new Mohawk Valley Gateway bridge in Amsterdam the other evening. Alan and Becky came too, as did our family and their little ones, our Amsterdam grandbabies.

Brotherband....

It was a very nice experience. The moon was nearly full, the river was lightly ruffled by a crisp autumn breeze, and the people we met in passing were cheerful and friendly. The girls were sweet as sugar and good as gold, and the bridge was a pleasant surprise.

It was of course, all shiny-new, but it was.......nice...native plantings, a 911 memorial, installations about the city, and a great deal to see and experience, all watched over by a big, pink and silver sky. Thanks, Scott and Jen, Maddie, and Claire, for a really nice night out.

Ice cream moon

If You See this Guy

Please join me in wishing him a very happy birthday.....

*Just discovered that it is granddaughter Maddie's birthday too! So have a happy!

Just Because

It's Wednesday.......whimsical....
handiful.......prayerful....rudiculous.....
quizzical..... not flatilicious.... puddle-wonderful...

And a prettiful for putting up with me.....