Honk, Honk! Canadian Geese Comin' Thru!

Yesterday a little after noon, three big wild Canadian Geese circled our pond a couple of times, decided it was okay to stop, and dropped in for a visit.

My pictures aren't good, I know, but keep in mind I was hanging out of hubby's office window and the geese were a mile and a half away. (Not really. I exaggerate.)

I wonder why there were three of them? Geese mate for life so you usually see an even number of them together. Unless this was a mom and pop with a single offspring from this year?

When our domestic Shetland geese spotted them, they were not very welcoming and/or friendly. They jumped into the pond with them and set up a bit of a kafuffle which didn't seem to faze the wild geese to any degree at all so our domestic flock backed off feigning no loss of dignity.

The Canadian honkers didn't seem too skittish. We drove up and down the driveway that goes by the pond a couple of times and hubby even walked near the pond once with the dog without frightened them away.

But when my husband went out at dusk to lock up our poultry for the night, the wild geese took one look at him and seemed to say, "Don't even THINK about locking us up!", took flight and that's the last we've seen of them.

I hope they tell all their friends our pond is a good place to visit for a little rest.

It's Those #*%@ Blue Jays!

It's like something out of Hitchcock's "The Birds." We've been invaded by blue jays. We've never seen so many blue jays. They are swarming the area in huge flocks, I tell ya, flocks. Even when we were hiking yesterday (about 11-12 miles from here) we saw scads of them.

Not to say I have anything against blue jays per se. You have to admire their joie de vivre and colorful visage. However, as a preamble to this sad tale I'm about to relate (cue in lilting, bucolic music), . . .

For the first time our little homestead seems to be blessed with what looks to be a wonderful apple crop.

Not only are the apples healthy and good-sized . . .

. . . but it looks as if we might stand a chance of actually getting some to mature this year. (None of the above three pictures were enhanced. That's just the way they came out of the camera. Gorgeous, huh?)

(Now cue music from "Jaws.") But this is what the blue jays are doing to the apples.

After trying several other methods of keeping those golldarn birds away from the apples, yesterday we resorted to this.

Ask me how easy it was to get the netting up and over this tree. We don't have enough netting to cover all the trees completely (see pathetically protected tree in background) but we did what we could to (hopefully) safeguard the trees with the most apples on them.

By the bye, what's hubby doing wandering among the trees this morning with a shovel in hand? Why, he's on Poop Patrol, of course. Yessir, it's a glamorous life living on the homestead. If you're not straining your garters trying to install netting over fruit trees while being dive bombed by raucous blue jays, you're shoveling . . . uh, um, excrement from one animal or another.

But rest assured, we wouldn't trade it for anything.

Shunting The Shoulds

This year hubby and I are bound and determined to get out and take advantage of this absolutely best time of the year for hiking. For his forty-some year teaching career, we always felt we missed out on fully enjoying fall because it signaled the start of the school year and weekends were given to doing the maintenance and must dos around the homestead before winter set in.

But now we have no excuse for not getting out frequently in this prime hiking time. So balderdash, I say. Balderdash to all the lists of (never ending) jobs that should be done.

We went hiking this morning along a favorite and picturesque river near us.

There are several spots along the trail where you can see the water cascading down through the river gorge.

When we started out, especially down near the river, it was kinda chilly. But with the sun shining and the temperature rising, we were soon peeling off layers.

Looking down, down, down into the gorge.

Hubby on one of the sturdy bridges built over otherwise un-crossable areas.

Even though the river is extremely low because of our hot summer and lack of rainfall, there's still a lot of water pouring over these falls.

There are extensive trails (hiking, snowmobiling and cross country skiing) going off and away on both sides of the river (we went up one side and down the other) and we said we could literally spend every day until winter comes hiking, exploring and learning the whole area. Okay, so maybe we won't get back there every day. (The Responsibility Police would track us down, I just know.) But I sure wouldn't mind another hike or two in the area before the snow flies.

A Rebirth

A year ago this month our hard-working, beloved old high-sided trailer suffered a terrible indignity during a bad wind storm.

This piece of equipment was old when hubby's Uncle George gave it to us shortly after we were married 47 years ago. We've rebuilt it twice and I cannot begin to tell you how much we've used it and everything that's been hauled in it. When we went out to survey the damage the morning after the storm and came upon the above scene, it almost felt like we'd lost a member of the family.

After checking out the damage, we thought it wasn't salvageable. But during the time since the tree whomped down on it, every now and then one of the "men folk" seeing it parked in an out of the way place on the property would walk around it, get down on hands and knees to take a peek underneath and say he thought the frame wasn't too badly damaged and maybe it could be saved. So we rethought our decision to junk it and decided to give a go at rebuilding it.

A couple of weeks ago when family was visiting from California, our nephew-in-law, B, told hubby he wanted to help get started on taking off the sides and damaged metal. They got a good bit done before B left to go home. (What was I doing that afternoon? I failed to get a picture, but I sure wish I had.)

Last Saturday good friend J stopped by, apparently couldn't stand to see the job half done, and insisted on helping finish the deconstruction.

And go at it, they did.

A few cold beers later, and almost finished.

All ready to go to the local body shop to have the frame straightened.

This morning hubby delivered the skeleton trailer to the shop at 8 A.M. and tonight we got a call saying he could pick it up tomorrow morning.

Now some welding on of new supports, building a new floor and sides and we'll be back in business again. Whoopee! We have missed having that trailer more than you could imagine.

Ya Want The Good News Or The Bad News First?

Aw heck, I'll give ya the bad first and get it out of the way.

Because of our warmer than usual growing season, my Red Kuri squash have been lookin' pretty darn good. But now that we have plummeted into our fall temps and the days are wonderfully cool and crisp, I've been afraid the squash wouldn't be able to make it that last step toward ripe maturity.

Today I decided to cut one open to see how it looked. I picked the smallest one I could find, brought it in and opened it up.

Rats. Still a good ways from ripe. When ripe the flesh should look almost orange, like it does way out toward the rind at the edge of this squash.

Then I got to thinking that since I chose a very small squash for testing, wouldn't that mean it was a "young" squash and hadn't had as much time to grow as one of the larger ones?

Back out into the garden to harvest a good-sized one. Alas and alack, it looked just the same inside as the first little one. Sad to say, I just don't think they will have enough time and/or warm weather to make it (again!) this year. (Where's that large hoop greenhouse when I need it?)

Okay, forget the squash. On to the good news.

I planted two rows of red potatoes and two rows of white potatoes this year. The vines have been dead and shriveled for a while now but I haven't gone out to the patch to sneak even one potato until today. I was fixing dinner and wanted to make mashed potatoes with gravy to go with Swiss Steak so asked hubby to grab a spading fork and bucket and follow me out to the garden. If the potato harvest was going to be anything like last year's pitiful offering, we would have to dig a bit for even enough for our meal today.

Holy spuds, Batman! This was just from the very first plant we dug up. Six pounds and one ounce of beautiful, firm potatoes. The big one in front weighed in at one pound by itself.

If this is indicative of what the rest of the harvest will be like, we will have more than enough potatoes to eat and share this winter.

So let's look at it this way: If you had to choose one . . . potatoes or squash . . . of which would you rather have an ample supply? Yup, I'd take potatoes every time, and be very grateful.

Taking Some Time Off

I had decreed that after the last of our company left (even though we enjoyed having them very much), I would take a week off and vegetate. Maybe stay up late at night quilting, sleep in in the morning, ignore the remaining work in the garden, read in the hammock (covered with a minimum of two quilts), etc., etc.

C flew back to California yesterday. I did spend the day canning my last batch of pickled beets and freezing eleven servings of beets, and taking care of a couple of other "must dos." So maybe I shouldn't count yesterday as the first day of my week off? Okay. I won't.

I definitely started today in a relaxing mode though. I woke at 4:30 for a bathroom stop and had a little trouble falling back asleep. I contemplated getting a jump start on my first real day "off" by getting up at 5, but finally fell back asleep . . . until nearly 8 o'clock!

Had a leisurely latte at the computer and then hubby and I decided to go for a hike. Drove down the road about 20 miles to a favorite spot of ours.

We were surprised to see the colors have changed as much as they have. The climb to the outlook that was our destination (above I'm at the very start of the trail) is pretty much straight up. These little, short, fat legs of mine demanded several rest stops but that made the climb tolerable . . . and not too painful. (Boy, do I have to get in shape for this winter's snowshoeing and skiing!)

Whadda view from the top. The lake is a popular one which has many year 'round as well as seasonal homes on it.

It may look like two lakes but the land in the middle is actually a peninsula sticking out into the lake.

Even though we got a little warm on the climb up, we were glad we'd dressed in layers because there was a cool, stiff breeze out on the overlook.

We were about halfway down the trail when my better half spied a much less used trail veering off from the main one. (If he had a tattoo, it would say, "Take the road less traveled.") He's always been a bushwhacker of the first degree so off we went to see where the unmarked trail would lead us.

The path got fainter and more overgrown the farther we went. We came to this tree fallen over the trail that was too high for me to clamber over and I would have had to crawl under it on all fours. No problem. Out of his well-equipped pack he carries everywhere, hubby produced a folding hand saw and removed the tree. (Or maybe his tattoo would say, "Be prepared.")

I had my doubts as to where this off-shoot trail would come out, but as usual hubby was right on and we were very close to where we had left our vehicle.

A stop on our way home for a late lunch at a funky, little mom and pop (actually a sister and sister) restaurant for their home cooked $5 lunch special, and we called it a fine outing.

This such a great time of year to be out and about!