an awful falafel?

Pepita has gamely worn her donut...

...but now it's off and she's footloose and fancy free!

We've had our first frost...

...but she's still out on the trail.  I bought so many size S and M coats for her, but she's a lot more...stout...than we anticipated.  She's a short dog, but pretty stocky.  Still, a few fit.

Despite the frost, the days are warm enough that bees are still buzzing around.

A few butterflies and moths too, but mostly I find reminders that their time is nearly up.

Despite virtually no attention, we still have quite a few flowers blooming.

I'd planted morning glories in a pot by our porch in MAY.  All summer long, I hauled jugs of water for it, but we just had a lot of leaves.  Disgusted, I stopped caring for it in September.  The pot dried up.  The leaves drooped.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, it started blooming. 

Another head-scratcher...we didn't have any apple blossoms (or apples) this year because of a fungus.  However, six months late, we're starting to get a few blossoms!  Crazy!

We've been hearing coyotes almost every night, and close.  Deer regularly visit the yard, including this buck...

...with the same leg infection that we've been seeing all summer in local deer.

Claudia is thriving in the barn but refuses to go outside, even on nice days.  That's all right...we have a new feral cat to focus on!  His name is Falafel, a word that I think is really fun to say.  It works on two levels, too, because Todd isn't keen to have stray around...just in case Claudia decides to come out.  So he can call him Fal-Awful.  But I've already decided to feed and house Falafel this winter.  We've got stray cat houses and electric water bowls, so I'll set up a feeding station in our white barn.  Yay!

Just a little bit of yard work in these waning days of October...

But for me, the weather has turned and I'm mostly hanging inside with the cats.

Loving fall so much this year.

Have a great week!

merry berries

 Before our recent below-freezing cold snap...

new calendula bloom opening up

...my flowers continued to behave irrationally.

mint and euphorbia

Everything, up until a few days ago, was so green and even showing new growth!

butterfly bush

The morning glory vines were covered with new flowers.

Crazy!

We may have lost the green this week...but we still have plenty of red.

Berries, berries everywhere!

Even a few red leaves, too.

It's much too cold for Claudia outside.  We've moved her into the temperature-controlled barn for the week.

In past years, she was always eager to get back outside, no matter how cold it was.  But in her old age, she prefers to snuggle in a warm bed indoors.

Meanwhile, I finally completed a little project that's been a procrastination point this past six weeks.  I bought a skiing fox Christmas ornament.  Cute fox, ugly brown coat.  What a missed opportunity for something cheerful!

I cut off the coat...

...and just freehanded a little knitted project that took less than an hour, start to finish.  I knitted a piece of fabric to roughly match the size of his previous coat.  I decided that I'd rather have a fun blue bathrobe!  A frilly collar peeking out completed the look.

That's more like it!  Now he's ready for Christmas!  :)  

Have a great week!

bobcat habitat

It's that strange time of year when summer and fall overlap.  On one hand, we still have flowers.  Late-season roses are blooming...

...along with the companion morning glories that I planted, that don't quite match up in color but makes the climbing roses look more full.

I'm still pulling tons of flowers from the garden.

Lots of critters still around, like this round-backed millipede...

...and megachile apicalis, this little bee...

...and this spider wasp.  

As the name implies, they hunt spiders and paralyze them with a sting.  They drag them to their burrow and lay an egg on the corpse.  When the egg hatches, the larva has an easy food source.  Spider wasps have a notoriously nasty sting, one of the most painful you can experience from an insect ("electrifying" is the word most often used).  Like with most things, if you leave them alone, they won't bother you.

Lots of creatures and flowers, but more and more signs of fall.  It's apple time...

This year's apples are small but plentiful.  I've already processed about ten pounds and I've barely begun!  There will be a lot of apple pies this winter.  I dice up about 4 pounds of apples, add a bit of sugar/spices, and let them macerate in their juices for three hours.  Then I bag them up and freeze them.  They are ready to pop into a crust whenever the desire hits!

Lots of tomatoes now, too.  I have lost track of how many pounds of sauce and dehydrated tomatoes that I've put away!

Leaves are starting to change, too.

In part, though, it's because it's been SO dry.  We didn't have any rain for three weeks, and 90 degree temperatures.  Leaves were shriveling everywhere.

see all the dead leaves around Claudia?

It's definitely going to impact our fall color here, but at least we've got a bit!  

Our turkey poults are getting so big!  Soon they'll melt into the forest for the winter.

We've got so much activity on our trail cams.  A coyote in the back field!

The fawn and mom pair are still tied at the hip.

We've got a camera down by the big pond, facing a game trail.  So...many...animals!

Yes...that last video is the largest bobcat I've ever seen!  It showed up for a few days in early September but we haven't seen him around for the past week.  So exciting!!!

I'm going to keep an eye out for more activity...and cooler temperatures.  Have a great week!