It Makes Me Smile…

Yes, it makes me smile...

* When I head out the door to do morning chores, and my parrot hollers, “Bye-bye, see you later!”

* When I go outside and take a deep breath of that crisp, cool air that smells of leaves and fall.

* When I walk out in the back yard and all the chickens come running to greet me. (Okay, so they’re just looking for me to throw out grain, but it’s still fun!)

* When the hen I raised from a hatchling cause her mom deserted her waits for me to hold out a hand full of grain so she can eat from my hand.

* When our crazy dog comes running with a stick as long as he is hanging out of his mouth, then wants me to play games with spraying water at him while he runs around and still has the long stick in his mouth.

* When our cat plops down in front of me, and rolls over to have his tummy rubbed.

* When our Sheep Matriarch comes nosing around my hands to see if I have any treats.

* When our old goat gals come hobbling out of their pasture in the morning, ready to rock and roll even when they wobble like Weebles.

* When our llama puts her nose in my face to greet me “Good Morning.”

Living in the country sure makes for lots of smiles!

Another day on the farm...

It rained on us almost all the way back from Florida. It's rained on and off since we got home, at least until today.

Today the sun came out, and although there was a hard frost on the ground this morning, it warmed up quite a bit. I was able to go out in the middle of the day and use the water hoses to fill all the buckets in different pens and pastures.

I just came in from yet another foray outside, doing evening chores. We don't have many goats and sheep any more, but we sure have a lot of guineas! They outnumber the chickens 3 to 1, and they're very aggressive, so when I'm throwing grain around in the evening, I have to stand guard next to the chickens to make sure they get their share.

The last couple of evenings, our farm collie Toby has helped keep the guineas in the pasture, giving the chickens time to eat in peace. I'm not sure if he realizes he's helping though. He just loves to aggravate the guineas. His favorite game is to run through the middle of a bunch of them and watch them scatter in all directions.

But for whatever reason he's holding them at bay, it is helpful, and I hope he keeps doing it!

Florida's Paradise Birds

While in Florida, I came across this Bird of Paradise: And then here's one of the Birds IN Paradise:

If you like warm weather, then Florida might be the paradise you're looking for!

Florida Fruit

We're staying in a nice motel close to a lake. Here on the grounds, they have the makings for a tropical fruit salad. They have grapefruit trees and orange trees.
There are also banana trees:

And just to make things a little more interesting, after we make our fruit salad, we could watch the birds at the lake, like this one resting on one of the pilings near the shoreline.

This is a great place!

On the road again...

Yes, The Farmer and I are in Florida visiting family for the Thanksgiving holidays.

Here's a bit of Florida Forest:


HAPPY THANKSGIVING, wherever you are!

Going Nuts

We have several walnut trees in our back yard that are producing a bumper crop this year. The Farmer gathered up a bunch of these, first filling a wheelbarrow, then several plastic bags. He put this horde of nuts in our storage hut.

One of nature’s other bumper crops discovered his treasure trove.

Yes, there are lots of squirrels scampering through the trees and all over the yard, and they discovered Nut Heaven. No work at all, right there in one place was a mountain of walnuts.

They helped themselves.
They went nuts for the nuts, and now… they aren’t many left. The full sacks and full wheelbarrow are mostly empty.

Wasn’t it nice of The Farmer to pick up all those nuts so the squirrels wouldn’t have to work so hard?

It's that time of year...

No, I'm not talking about the time of year for Thanksgiving or Christmas, though it certainly is the season for those also! But here on the farm it's also time for the yearly bloom of my 'Winter Star' Camellia...
I hope to get some better pictures when more of the buds have opened!

The Frost is on the Pumpkin

Okay, I lied. The frost is NOT on the pumpkin. However, we did finally get a hard frost last night, and as I was headed out the door to take pictures this morning, I was just sure I'd be able to use that title. Wouldn't you know the few little pumpkins I bought were in sheltered locations and didn't get frosted!?!

You can see it on the windshield of Youngest Son's car:

You can see frost on the sheep's wool and where they were sleeping:

The last of the roses got frosted:

And of course, the grass and fallen leaves are frosty:
The sun hitting the newly frosted leaves is causing a shower of leaves to fall this morning:


Right now the oak trees, like the one shown here at the end of our driveway, still have most of their leaves:But the leaves are falling faster and faster:


So I figure it won't be long until all the trees look as naked as the walnuts do:
(... that picture is for you Robin! See, you're not the only one with leafless trees!)

And last, though you can't see the frost on the trees in this picture, I decided to include it because I like it, even if I do have it upside down here:
It may not LOOK upside down, but it's not really a picture of the trees, but a picture of their REFLECTION in our pond.

So, even though the frost wasn't on the pumpkin...
It was on most everything else this morning!

Red Bull Gives You Wings... uh, Tires???

Traveling I-75 today, we saw an interesting sight.

Now, what in the world do we see here? What's this big can on the car???
I know I've seen this can before somewhere. Is that a RED BULL I see?

Why yes, it IS a Red Bull!

Looks like to me Red Bull gives you TIRES, not WINGS!

And I guess it's time to re - tire after that one!

It's really fall...

Today was a beautiful fall day with lots of sunshine and a vivid blue sky. It was just a tad chilly, with lots of wind. It was my kind of day!

The pine trees to the left are along the front edge of our yard, and the big tree at the right is a huge oak sitting at the corner of the yard by our driveway.

We don’t seem to get the right weather conditions to have a lot of leaf coloration in the fall. Most of the time the leaves just turn brown and fall off the tree, but we do have a few with some colored leaves.
Here's a close-up of some of the leaves near the top of the oak. It was tough to get a sharp picture since the wind kept blowing the leaves around!

There were all kinds of bugs out busily gathering nectar from any flowers they could find.

This goldenrod seemed to be a particular favorite for all kinds of bugs and bees!

Somewhere along the line this summer, some butterfly bush seed must have floated over to the pond banks, since I see we now have a little bush growing there. It's even blooming!

The pond water is beautifully clear around the edges. A lot of leaves have fallen into the water, which the wind has blown to the edges.

If we're really lucky, we'll have a lot more nice weather like today. I'm not going to count on it though. A hard frost can't be too far away, and winter coming fast behind that.

But for today, it was fall and it was beautiful.