It’s a good thing I haven’t updated in a month, because the posts would have been obsessed with squirrels. (No squirrels for you! Trust me, I’ve got pictures.) They are under strict (oh well, not so strict) rationing of two to three chestnuts per day.

The two boys – Rufus and Clyde – know me well. Clyde dominates Rufus, but Rufus seems to be more like a pet. A smaller squirrel comes by and I chuck it a chestnut that it fails to notice, because squirrels are not super-scenters like dogs are, it seems.

We had our first frost a couple of nights ago. The swiss chard is surviving, as it usually does, but its days are numbered. I’ll be eating more of it in the coming weeks. The rabbits are getting peevish about getting old tomato leaves, but I’m also giving them juicy wilted nasturtiums. The green tomatoes are in a box in the garage, still on their vines, and the ones in the kitchen are turning red.

As soon as I saw a bloom on it, I canned the sauerkraut.

I cooked down two of the three pumpkins. The third became a Jack-o-Lantern for Hallowe’en. It’s on the table on the back patio, and both Rufus and Clyde have had fun chewing it – on the outside and from the inside.

There is one house sparrow, a little male, first-year it seems, who broke his leg and so he’s not that able to perch – he must hunker down on his foot. He comes with the other groups of sparrows and gets his fair share of millet seed. He is more flighty than the others since he must be defensive about his disability, but I hope he will be OK over the winter with enough food and water. I watched him figure out how to bathe in the pond yesterday.

Today, the first red Northern Cardinal came by.

And as for myself, now that I’ve put the garden away for the winter, I plan my day to get my work underway. There was a time in my life where, I kid you not, I had “1063 actions to do under 54 projects.” Those days are over! I have something like 7 underway now:

See you next month!