Running Against the Wind

So far we have seen a shocking amount of rain, but whatever wind there was wasn't bad enough to wake me up. The dog buckets were full this morning though, and yesterday I noticed that they needed filling. I did not participate in the filling this time.

Now my phone is getting all excited with alerts about road closures and flood warnings, and the gust are getting kind of noticeable so I guess I had better bring the puppers in.

Dang. I wanted to get at least a thousand words written before I went on daytime duty.

Ah, well, welcome to morning. 

Pennants

October's flying her last flags;  she won't surrender to November. 

Walk the wild side, 

Walk it now. Get her before she leaves us;

We went out west again yesterday to visit, and bird, and so Becky could shop. The colors were fine as frog's hair, all purple, puce, and magenta.....plus every single shade of brown and gold that the good Lord chose to send us. 

Oaks of every shape and sort were clinging to their leaves like oak trees always do. 

I think they're bashful. 

Maples, sumacs, the tender deciduous trees, they just let it all hang out.

Toss their leaves on the closet floor, race away naked, rustle, rustle, rustle.

Oaks hug their wrappers tight around them, like grannies wearing curlers, clutching flannel to their breasts, as if to ward off peepers.

Peeping Toms that we are, we delighted in the colors, and a good thing too, as at least hereabouts the woods are getting awful bare.

All too soon comes the penance of November, payback for every inch of summer.

I was grateful today for one last wild walk....well, maybe not the last, but the end of these passable days is coming soon....before the white stuff flies and ice and hunters keep me near the house.

Endangered Species Flack

I ain't afraid of no ghost

Please, please, read this story. 

"Since the Dusky Gopher Frog is nowhere to be found on the land in question, designating a big slice of it as “unoccupied critical habit” is an oxymoron. You might as well say the moon is unoccupied critical habitat of Casper the Ghost Frog. This goes too far."

Don't get me wrong, I have always loved frogs, but this is nuts.

Dawn Ponies

Good natured little Diamond, such a sweet, kind pony.

The eastern sky looks like a blood orange just now..... dawn is nearly coming.

It's still dark in the barn though.

How do you hold a flashlight and serve up slabs of hay I wonder....I stick it in my pocket and fumble around for the dull knife that hangs there to cut twine......I have a super sharp Swiss Army knife in the house. I carry it always. Why am I fighting with this thing? Feeding horses in my bathrobe, that's why.

The ponies are just blobs of grey in the gloom.

It doesn't matter; they are as predictable as sunrise, if not as bright in color.

Jack has his head through the gate, nickering and shuffling his little black hooves. He is the quintessential pony, full of fuss and bother. "Me first, me first, me first..." 

And so I feed him first, nearest the door and just plain easier. And quieter.

Diamond stands broadside to her door, calm and serious, and so very gentle, the nicest mare I have ever worked around, just waiting for me to toss her hay in the corner. 

And then Gambit. He is tiny, so he puts his front hooves on the bottom rim of his stall door, the better to roll his big white eye at me and pinch his dainty nostrils, threatening grievous bodily harm if I don't hurry up with that blasted hay.

Hah, I'm not fooled. He is so darned friendly he wants to be petted every single morning before he turns around to eat. And so I pet him.

I like feeding the ponies. Heck, I just like ponies. 

And that's all.

Corn Henge

And BIG tillage tools

One Day at a Time

No fear at 11 months...much braver than in later years

After a great weekend and weeks of incredible weather, the season is sliding down into winter. Yesterday was a weirdly warm rainy one, a lot of water came down. Every time I tried to go out and walk the rain would intensify and I would be chased indoors.

Good thing I have my grandmother's cedar chest to keep me entertained. Mom gave it to me for my birthday this year and during the busy days of summer I neglected poking through it. It is still full of things that grandma saved, old birthday cards, bills, newspaper clippings and such. Photos. Lots and lots of photos.

I have done a little spelunking in there over the past few days and found all sorts of treasures. A photo of me on a pony at eleven months old, grinning like a Jack 'o Lantern. Guess I liked horses right from the start.

Photos of grandma and grandpa's dog, Nikki. I was so fond of him...

The stairs in their old house where we used to sit on the landing upstairs and "fish" down into the kitchen with strings. We only caught passing grownups who obliged by tugging our string "fishing lines" but we were easy to entertain in those days.

The leaning garage held up by its contents, or so we used to joke back in the day. When your grandparents lived through the Great Depression they don't throw things away.

My mama and daddy's wedding photo, looking so fine and happy.

And much, much more.

Kinda brightens up these gloomy days.

I need to go through the photos again and sort them out for different cousins and brothers and all. Too much treasure for just me to hoard.

And 29 years later, 30 years old, at grandma's 75th birthday party. I sure loved those two.

May I Help Who's Next?

I spent this past Saturday, helping (to the best of my meager ability), these two hard-working young folks, at Amber's family's Homemade Frozen Custard Shop at the Windmill in Penn Yan. 

You should have seen them go! It made me tired just watching them, as they waited on customers, twirled cones, and built sundaes. Meanwhile, I fried what needed frying after kinda/sorta learning to run the fryer.

It was an interesting day and I had a lot of fun. The Windmill is an incredibly cool place with so many tempting products and lots and lots of produce for sale. You could do your Christmas shopping all in one stop, while filling the pantry and freezer with goodies, and having more tasty things to eat than you could imagine.....just ask me about the Spud Boat.

We did a whirlwind tour in the morning before the crowds arrived and I can't wait to go back, although that will probably have to wait until next summer.

However, if you are out that way next Saturday, the location's last open day for the year, do stop in and look around. The kiddies will be dressed up for Halloween and I can personally recommend the ice cream. Admission is free, parking ditto, and with around 200 vendors there is so much to see you won't know which way to turn.

Do not miss this booth,
best homemade ice cream and chicken and all sorts of other stuff in town.
(Hey Bath peeps do you see what I did here with the pumpkin, as I didn't have photo permission for the guy at the window? LOL)

Eccentric

Another zealous apple picker

Good thing it's dark at 5:30 in the morning or they might come for me with a net.

Because I was out in the driveway with a flashlight at that hour this morning, using my doggie-kennel-super-duper-scooper to roll apples down the hill.

It took quite a while. 

And why, you may ask, was I rolling apples down the hill?

Well, that old Winesap of Grandma Peggy's, which sometimes I think of as being more of a Whinesap...or maybe I'm the sap and also whiny....had a bumper crop of apples this summer.

Quite literally. It stands next to the walkway to the dogs' runs, the wood stove, the pony and horse yards, and several gardens. 

And it is a menace. Guess it got Liz once and I've had a couple of near misses. The apples fall so hard they split every time. Whack! Whap! Crack! That'll wake you up...

Then yesterday afternoon when I was walking Mack up for his afternoon constitutional, he screamed and began racing around on three legs, frantically looking at his nether regions. It took a lot of petting and cuddling to calm him down.

Alas, horses are not the only ones that like apples. The Yellow Jackets and assorted other stinging nuisances love them too. 

Poor Mack. Being a Jack Russell Terrier, he was soon running around as if nothing had happened, but he sat down in a very dainty manner the rest of the day.

You can't rake wasp infested apples in daylight so.....

Call me eccentric, but don't call the authorities. This all makes sense when you're me. Thanks.

Drama on the High Seas

Snidely Whiplash

Or the tranquil river, as the case may be.

We had fifteen minutes to burn before picking up Becky at work, so we went down to the Schoharie Crossing SHS boat launch to look around. I walked off by myself a ways and saw a thing sleeping on the riverbank.

It was about the size of a Mallard, but it just....wasn't.....

If I didn't know better I'd have sworn that it was a Brant. 

Nell...AKA Branta bernicla

While not exactly rare, spotting a Brant is only a sometimes experience. I took a lot of pictures of the bankside lump and looked around some more....ooh, two sandpipers. I thought they were Greater Yellowlegs, although they were far away and didn't look or act quite right. (I was delighted later to discover that I was wrong.)

 

I snapped pics of them and went back to the boss. Fifteen minutes and all you know.

Suddenly from the east came a Bald Eagle sailing low over the trees.

He spotted the lump.

Snidely attempting to invite Sweet Nell to dinner...his dinner....

And wham, down he came. Up went the sandpipers, but the Brant just swam, right up in front of us.

It was something to see. The eagle strafed the water, the little goose dove and dodged. The sandpipers were long gone.

Eventually the eagle gave up and sailed away. The goose just kept on swimming.

Even the boss was excited and told some fellows who stopped at the next picnic table for lunch all about it.

And the second best part of it....the sandpipers turned out to be Pectorals, lifers for me and new for my county list. 

What a great 18 minutes...yeah, we stayed a little longer than we planned. Becky didn't mind a bit.

Curses, foiled again!

Watch your Step

Lots of birding by ear today

So foggy a cottontail I startled jumped right on a bird that was feeding in the road
What a kerfluffle!

Oh, look, a Carolina Wren!

Sun's up!

Not as foggy up here on the hill

Hear all those Robins? There must be 30 of them!

What a year for Yellow-rumped Warblers

The trees are full of them and they love to hunt bugs on the buildings.
Birders have nicknamed them "Butterbutts"

Home again, home again

But watch your step