Coon #5

 I was Dead! Dead! Dead! asleep at 1:30 AM when Stan decided to wake me up saying "Get the gun we've got another coon in the back yard." Max had treed it and was going crazy, it was 30 degrees and there I am standing in my nightie and slippers in the back yard with a rifle. It would be so much simpler if the dog would just keep the coons totally out of the yard, but noooo, he thinks it's great sport to let them sneak through the fence and then he trees them using his nasty, vicious junk yard dog attitude to keep them in the tree until he wakes us up to come see what the problem is . He is so funny, as soon as we go out to see what's up he turns into a wiggly silly puppy again totally overjoyed at what he's done. I dispatched the coon with a head-shot, Stan hauled the carcass out by the hay barn and I'll go bury it today. Stan left at 3:AM for the airport to fly to NM. I want to thank my dog for the added chore, because he will lay sleeping in the sun while I'm digging the hole. Oh well, at least the coon didn't get the little Banty hen that's setting on a nest of eggs under a shrub in the back yard. And why is it that hen has a perfectly good hen house with cozy nest boxes and instead she's hiding under a bush tempting fate? Farm Life

Frogs

Last night while I was cleaning the kitchen this guy stopped for a few minutes to watch me and then he was off to chase down a crane fly.

Cooler Mornings

It's only the first week of October and my mind is already turning to thoughts of indoor projects. YUCK!

The Poison Oak on all hillsides is turning red, the Maples and Ash are changing. We've covered the debris pile so it stays dry for our annual bonfire on Samhain.

My leaf lettuce patch is ready to cut. I'll be bagging it to share with friends and co-workers today.

 It's time to move the little hen and her baby out of the dogs house and into the chicken coop with the other birds.

The Lantana has slowed down with the cooler nights, I'll hate to see it go.

The herb garden has gone wild, it's time to cut it all back and get one last growth of fresh tips before the frosts come.

It's time to collect seeds to overwinter so I'll be ready to start it all again in the early spring. The wood has been cut, chopped and stacked. Sometimes on very cool mornings I can smell the smoke from wood stoves already put to use in our valley. I'm wearing sweatshirts and heavier socks on those mornings I just can't bring myself to start a fire and I refuse to turn up the thermostat for the furnace.

Early Fall

I can't walk through the yard without stepping on a frog, they are every where, at night it sounds like we are living in a swamp.This morning while I was making my first cup of coffee I watched one climb across my kitchen window.

I've quit fertilizing the garden pots it will be time to take them all down soon. They've been beautiful all summer but the days have shortened and the nights have cooled down. The annuals are losing their vigor and most of the perennials are past their bloom seasons. The asters and mums are bringing the best color to the yard now, the roses are still putting out the occasional bloom and the dahlias along the Bocce court are beautiful.

It's time to clean the potting shed/greenhouse and get it ready for winter. I will set up a propagation bed, there are several roses around the county that I will take cuttings from to propagate over the winter. The fiberglass roof needs to be replaced it's started leaking in a couple places. I guess it will have to last another year we're building a deer fence this winter.

 This boy has been visiting the garden all summer. He has picked every leaf off the pepper plants. He will take a bite out of the peppers and then leave them, he's even tasted the jalapenos. He hasn't decided if he likes the tomatoes, he waits until they are just starting to turn red he pulls them off the plant takes a single bite and leaves them on the ground.

I had the opportunity to get to the Swan Island Dahlia Festival this year and found several new dahlias I want for my garden. I'm limiting myself to eight new plants.

Summers End

We've come to that time when the days have shortened and the evenings have cooled. The horses coats are  beginning to lose their summer sleekness, it's as if there is more air trapped next to their skin and static is attaching to them.  There is a mist that hangs in the air in the early mornings.

When I was a very small girl, I remember how exciting the changes in the seasons felt and how I recognized just when the seasons started to give up their grasp and prepare to move on. In the very late summer when the evenings had begun to cool, the winged termites would hatch in the nearby woods and my sisters and friends and I would make a contest of batting them from the air and then counting our captures. There were no prizes awarded for this game, it was simply the joy of running and chasing and laughing. We never tired of the game and would run until we were called in for dinner. My mother would complain that we were dirty, and sweaty and stank. Once I made my youngest sister sit still while I sniffed and smelled all around her to see what Mother was talking about. All I could smell was her five year old sweaty body from play, there was the scent of the dried grasses we had played in and the smell of earth on her hands and elbows and knees. I was pretty sure there was something very wrong with Mother's nose.

Life Is A Garden

A circadian rhythm is a roughly-24-hour cycle in the biochemical, physiological or behavioral processes of living entities, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria . The term "circadian", coined by Franz Halberg, comes from the Latin circa, "around," and diem or dies, "day", meaning literally "approximately one day." The formal study of biological temporal rhythms such as daily, tidal, weekly, seasonal, and annual rhythms, is called chronobiology.

Circadian rhythms are endogenously generated, and can be entrained by external cues, called zeitgebers, the primary one of which is daylight. These rhythms allow organisms to anticipate and prepare for precise and regular environmental changes.

The earliest known account of a circadian rhythm dates from the 4th century BC, when Androsthenes, a ship captain serving under Alexander the Great, described diurnal leaf movements of the tamarind tree. The first modern observation of endogenous circadian oscillation was by the French scientist Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan in the 1700s; he noted that 24-hour patterns in the movement of the leaves of the plant Mimosa pudica continued even when the plants were isolated from external stimuli.

In 1918, J. S. Szymanski showed that animals are capable of maintaining 24-hour activity patterns in the absence of external cues such as light and changes in temperature. Joseph Takahashi discovered the genetic basis for the mammalian circadian rhythm in 1994.

Wikipedia