Glorious October

October, sort of the opposite of March, comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion. This year, early October brought lots of Monarch butterflies. This one was in the pasture, near the compost pile:

 And a number of them swarmed the New England Asters in the front yard:

 Monarchs don't hold still often, and usually close their wings when they do, so I was excited to get some nice photos of them on the Asters:

 And the new, baby roses put out a last burst of flowers. This one was the Emily Carr:

And the Morden Sunrise:

 The Rugosa roses on the side of the house also continued to bloom:

 The giant sunflowers were almost finished blooming and their seed was now feeding the wild birds, but a few tiny miniature sunflowers continued to bloom at their feet:

 Perhaps the last vase of flowers to go to church this year consisted of some small sunflowers, three kinds of roses (Morden Sunrise, Emily Carr and a Morden Blush bud), one Delphinium, New England Asters and a branch of dark red leaves from the Ninebark bush:

And the local scenery took on the look of October with roadside displays of pumpkins for sale:

 Red Sumac and purple New England Asters along the road:

 I stopped at a bridge over the St. Regis River to take this photo:

 Then I walked out toward the middle of the bridge to get more of the river in the picture. October in the north country is a wonderful time of year:

A Peaceful Time Of Year

Our temperatures have been gradually getting cooler and we've had more rain. The Cliff Swallows and Redwing Blackbirds have disappeared, the Starlings are flocking and the Goldfinches suddenly seem to be everywhere. Blue and Remy continue to spend their days in the corral. I dare not let them out until almost all the green grass is gone lest they get laminitis (founder) again:

But they seem content, and all the extra handling they've gotten has them behaving beautifully:

The cattle are fat and contented, though the flies are a persistent problem:

Little Ruby is growing rapidly but Scarlett, her mom, is still swollen with more milk than the little one can drink. That won't last, though, as Ruby grows and wants more milk:

I planted Armenian Basket Flower seeds this spring but none came up. I waited a long time for them, then bought some half price Red Hot Poker roots to replace them. The four Red Hot Pokers came up, although I worried that they weren't hardy enough to endure our winters. Then one day I said, "Wait a minute - those aren't Red Hot Poker leaves." I looked online and discovered they were Armenian Basket Flower (AKA Giant Yellow Knapweed) leaves after all. Four of them were growing and one now seems to be sending up a flower stalk:

Some neighbors came to collect all my windfall apples (that 55 gallon drum was almost full, as were a number of pails and coolers). They will feed them to their pigs:

Flowers are almost done for the year, but I managed to put together three vases full to bring to church on Sunday. This one included mini-sunflowers, pink Rose Mallows and Tree Hydrangeas:

All sunflowers, but various colors. Someone from church had a death in the family the previous night, so these flowers went to him after the service:

Peony leaves (turning autumn red), various colors of Yarrow, blue Delphinium and Rugosa roses:

These baby fantail pigeons were not siblings, but they had found each other, established a friendship and slept together in a nest. I found it heart warming:

The flock is now so large that I will have to sell some as soon as the babies are all on their own:

Flowers, Pigeons, Chickens

August this year brought abundant flowers, so many that one Sunday I brought four vases of them to church. This one contained four colors of Daylilies and Blue Sea Holly (looks a bit like thistles):

Yellow Heliopsis, red Echinacea, blue Delphinium and red/green leafy branches from a Ninebark bush:

All wildflowers from alongside the road: Pink Joe-Pye-Weed, yellow Goldenrod and Purple Loosestrife:

White Tree Hydrangeas, multicolored Sunflowers and pink and red Yarrow:

Meanwhile, the little hens were living comfortable lives in their coop inside the barn:

They all get along well together and I never see any fighting. They have no rooster, but I sometimes hear crowing coming from their coop. I looked it up and learned that sometimes, in the absence of a rooster, one hen will become more masculine and began crowing:

It was me, and I keep everybody on their toes!

Egg production is way down, which is fine with me. This day I had only two small eggs, one pink and one green. Soon, as we head toward winter, there will be none:

The white fantail pigeons in the adjoining room are multiplying at a fast clip:

This mother had a nest on the floor with a six day old baby:

A nest up on a shelf had two recently hatched babies. The parents are on them so much that I haven't been able to get another photo since this one:

Chickens, Flowers, Turkeys

The little hens were closed up for the night when I snapped this photo. I made sure they had lots of food and water, then I collected the eggs and went back to the house for my own dinner and evening ritual:

 I never did learn what this mysterious Daylily is called, but it sure looks pretty in the early morning light as it begins to open:

 This Daylily I know the name of. It is called Paradise Pink:

 My favorite planting this year was the multicolored Yarrow. It's so thick that it's crowding out the weeds and so floriferous that I have a constant supply of colorful flowers:

And the red Yarrow is my favorite:

 But there are plenty of other colors and combinations as well:

Just a couple of days after I deadheaded the baby roses, I was shocked to see this Sevillana rose, barely 10" high, loaded with flowers again:

 I am still bringing flowers to church, including three vases full this Sunday. This was a collection of white (wild) Bouncing Bet, three colors of Daylilies, and Rugosa roses:

Several colors of Yarrow, yellow Heliopsis and blue Delphinium:

 Multicolored Sunflowers and Gloriosa Daisies:

Up the road from me is a pair of Narragansett turkeys, a male and female, who march out into the road and sometimes stop traffic. The male seems to be trying to assert his dominance as he displays to each car. I find this one of the delights of country life:

What's Happening Around The Farm

The little bantam hens are only laying three or four eggs a day, but even that is more than I can eat. I've begun bringing eggs in for a friend at church each Sunday, which so far seems to be a perfect solution:

I still don't let the chickens outdoors, though I hope I can do so in the fall. Though our fox population seems down, I now have seedlings and new plants all over - and I remember when I first got the chickens and the little hens raided my garden, first eating all the tomatoes, then eating all the plants:

The two baby fantail pigeons are amazingly healthy and smart. They jump down from their nest to join the flock and explore, then jump back up and peep for their parents to come feed them:

Their nest is on a ledge, just above the food barrel and someone else's nest on the floor. The babies frequently jump down and get friendly with the bird on the floor nest. I expected a defensive reaction from the adult, but so far everything has been friendly. The babies hang out with the nesting pair on the floor, then socialize with the flock, then hop back up on their ledge and call to be fed:

When I first moved here, there was a woven wire fence stretching halfway across the middle of the south field. It was dilapidated and of no good use, so I began removing a couple of sections each summer. This year there were only two left, but I hadn't had the energy to dismantle them. Then one day I was cleaning out the barn and saw there were only two sections of fence, so I drove the tractor over there:


Instead of the slow and careful dismantling I did previously, this time I used the tractor bucket to pull the fence and posts up out of the ground:

I got them all firmly held in place on the bucket and drove them out the gate and around by my work area:


I carefully removed the fence from the posts, then folded up the wire into two sections, put them in empty feed bags and dropped them in the trash bins. Now that awful, useless and potentially hazardous section of fence is gone forever:

The little garden I made where I'd removed most a giant stump was looking hopeless, but it improved a lot as the Yarrow and Chives began to grow. There appears to be some Globe Thistle coming along, and the Heliopsis, Delphinium and Veronica I bought at end-of-season sales are helping make my little garden look like it might work:

The stretch of Sunflowers is growing so fast that any photo I take is obsolete in a couple of days. Many of the plants along the fence are already over four feet tall. There are much smaller seedlings in the front of the strip, but they get the most sun and are therefore still likely to do well as the summer progresses:

And then one day, the first Daylily bloomed. I couldn't remember the variety name, so I looked up my last year's order. It is called "Chicago Arnie's Choice" and it appears as if there will be a lot of them. By the way, I've been calling them Day Lilies (two words), but it appears as if the correct name is Daylily (one word). I will try to remember to use the right word in the future:

What is this mess, you may ask. It's the northeast corner of the barn, where the traffic cones I used to use when the cattle crossed the road are nestled in giant Burdock and Ragweed. It's a good thing I don't have allergies: