What a gorgeous fall day!!! It’s sunny and a little bit of breeze and a wonderful 61°. The birds are enjoying it too.

It's that time of the year

October… winter is just around the corner, days are getting shorter and shorter, and I find myself craving pies, cakes and cookies. I made some pecan sticky buns the other night, and oh, they were soooooooooooooooo good! This winter I am determined to excise on a regular basis and lose weight instead of gaining it, in spite of sticky buns.

I was fully aware of the inevitability of limitations with growing older, but was not at all prepared for the pain involved. Whether it’s fibromyalgia or arthritis or whatever, I am having a hard time dealing with the pain. If it were just one thing, I think it would be easier, but I have issues with my back, my neck and shoulders, and then the sudden stabbing pains range from a deer fly bite to breath-stopping, teeth-gritting waves of pain. I get to go to a rheumatologist next month, yippee.

So far we’ve had a pretty pleasant fall, although we really could use some rain, as you can see in the photos of the cows at feeding time,

Suka and Pyr helping to get the cows in,

Such loves chickens, a bit too much, which is why he has a very expensive shock collar on him. Here he is in his stalking mode,

He’s intelligent enough to respond to verbal ‘don’t even think about it’ commands.

Speaking of chickens, we have a lot of multi-colored ones now, and they like to fly up to the deck railing to try to get to the bird feeders.

A pretty Joseph’s Coat bead on my Etsy shop,

and a chuckle for the day,

Indian Summer?

It’s a warm fall day here, the wind is blowing and the leaves are drying up. I don’t know what it portends, but we have a LOT of pine trees drying up and turning brown, even the big mature pines. I don’t recall seeing so many turning before, even in the drought years. We could use some rain, certainly. I’ve been watering my front flower garden because I plants some new perennials and bulbs. Much as I hate the hot weather, I do wish we could have another couple of months of this. I don’t think this is Indian Summer yet, because we still haven’t had a hard freeze.

We’ve got our wood and hay in for the winter, 50+ bales of hay and three-four cords of wood.

The mosquitoes and black gnats are out in force to get their last licks in. This big boy will be going to the butcher next month, and I won’t be too sad to see him go. He’s been sparring with Dexter, our bull, and I don’t want Dex getting hurt.

I was thinking this morning that I should probably take down the hummingbird feeder, but then I had a little straggler stop by, so I’ll leave it up for a bit yet. This is an earlier picture of a little girl preening herself,

I love storms, as long as they aren’t severe. The power of nature is always awe-inspiring.


The cat was sleeping on the kiln and fell off, here she was giving me the evil eye for laughing at her.

Some bead pics,



and funny Internet pics,

Simple pleasures of life: watching a baby goldfinch beg food from its parent, squawking and fluffing its wings and tail feathers.

Since it’s been too hot to work with the torch (or work outside), I’ve been spending time in the drawing room working on my Baltimore Oriole drawing. The feathers are driving me CRAZY!! I should have made the drawing bigger so I could get the details that I like, or smaller to cut out the details.
Too late now…

What a whirlwind of a month it’s been! End of last month Christian and I were out working on corner brace of pasture fence, I was pushing a pine branch out of the way, and it sprang back and a twig went straight in my ear and punctured my eardrum. Talk about freak accident! I went to Urgent Care and then to the my doctor the next morning, where he decided to have some lab work done on me. I’m deficient in Vitamin D again! Clearly my body isn’t converting sunshine to Vitamin D because I’ve been sporting a farmer’s tan from being outside so much.

I went to an eye specialist for a surgery consultation for strabismus. Five years ago she told me I would need surgery, and it had gotten to the point of not being able to walk without wearing prism glasses to see. The next week I had a pre-op exam, and the next week I had surgery. I really wait this ‘hurry up and wait’ business of going to the doctors. I sat in a side room, dressed in a hospital gown, no glasses so I couldn’t see anything, for an hour. By the time they walked me into the pre-op area, I was a nervous wreck (too many bad memories of when I was pregnant with Lukas and going through two stretches of inducement and an emergency C-section). Once they got the IV in, they were able to give me something to knock me out, thank goodness.

The surgery went well, the double vision is mostly gone, and hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be able to wear contacts again and get out of these glasses! LOL, I shrieked when I looked into the mirror the next day and saw stitches in my eyeball! Thank goodness they were the absorbing kind, and they’re pretty much gone now.

My big garden is a mess, just got too hot and too many things going on to keep up with the weeds. The gardener’s eternal hope, it’ll be better next year. My flower garden needs more color and more taming too, sigh. But I do have some blooms, Cleome,

a Copper King hibiscus,

and a couple of new hibiscus, a white one and a yellow one,

Some more bird photos, a hummer,

and Redwing Blackbirds,

We’ve got lots of grasshoppers again this year, which is bad for some of my plants and good for the chickens, because Christian likes to catch them and feed them to the chickens (can’t get any cheaper entertainment than that!),

A couple of new beads that I’m happy with,

and a couple of funny pics,

August already! The summer is flying by so quickly, and now the days are getting noticeably shorter. We’ve had a multitude of grackles and red-winged blackbirds this summer, and now their babies are joining them at the feeders.

This one was so funny. Just like any baby, the simplest of things will grab its attention, like a wire on a shepherd’s hook.


That wasn’t doing it, so he tried mouthing the hook itself.

Just too funny!

My sweet innocent Suka puppy,

I’m working on bead photos to start listing again, and here are some that will be going up hopefully tomorrow,




Funny Internet pics: