corgi cuddles and pumpkin huddles

 It's pumpkin time!

The second haul from the garden is a lot more impressive than the first.  Because I got my vines in the ground so late, this is only a fraction of what we'll be seeing in a few weeks!  With the forgiving weather, there are still plenty of pollinators for the floppy yellow flowers that will soon become pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, and colors.  A cursory check of a random blossom showed plenty of competition for the pollen:  one bumblebee and seven spotted cucumber beetles!

There are still plenty of butterflies, too!

The weather has been amazing.  Warm days and cool nights make a beautiful morning haze over the water.

Around here, the trees are starting to take on a bit more color.

Fall is the best time for mushrooms!

Both the yellow and red mushrooms are some sort of Amanita variety, common here and very toxic.  The blue Lacatarius Indigo is edible, but I would never trust my identification enough to consume any mushroom!  Fall rains and cooling temperatures awaken the underground fungal threads, which start sending up mushrooms.  They reproduce via the spores stored beneath their caps.  Some have "gills," like you can see in this photo from 2018:

Many of the ones I've been finding around here have pores instead, which are a series of narrow tubes through which the spores fall.  Both are so pretty!

It's warm and pleasant, but the muskrats are still hard at work, getting ready for winter.  They've built a second, even larger home behind the first one!

Claudia is, ahem, storing up energy for the long winter ahead.

Tabitha seems to be following her example...

...and Borga is staying extra close to her source of warmth!  ;)

They must know something that I don't know, because I'm still throwing open the windows and letting in the wonderful fresh air.

Have a great week!