fall

I woke up yesterday morning to see that about half of the leaves in the front yard had fallen all at once. Must have been a windy night, and it meant that I had to get out there and do some serious raking. I learned last year that if I don't keep up with the leaves our entire property becomes covered in an impenetrable slime of heavy thick maple leaves. Fall here means rain. We have lots of trees, and most of them are broadleaf maples. Beautiful shady trees in the summer, enormously tall, but their leaves are oh so very broad. Each tree has about a bajillion of them and when they fall they are like dragon scales.

It hadn't yet started raining, so I was able to get out there with my rake and my leaf-dragging tarp and get most of the front yard uncovered. Thursday night there's supposed to be a wind storm, and that should send the remaining leaves plummeting. I see more raking in Friday's future!


We also had yard visitors. Two adolescent deer meandering from back to front yard. I managed to take a picture of one of the ladies.


I worked all day on Monday on those coop plans, sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and listening to classical music. The turkeys were antsy so I decided to let them have the run of the kitchen. It took them a while to get the hang of wood floors. They tried to keep playing their flapping games and their legs would fly out from under them and they'd plop onto the floor. Today or tomorrow I'm going to try to move them outside to the coop. It's chilly out, but with a heat lamp in one corner they should be ok. I will miss their cacophony in the kitchen, but will not miss their turkey smell. Oi.