The End Of Summer

The Red Poll cattle are looking happy and healthy:

 Little Ruby has not yet had her ear tattoos but she seems to know I'm a suspicious character so she hides behind her mother, Scarlett:

 And Scarlett usually hustles her away when I get too close:

 Blue and Remy are doing fine, but their Box Elder tree will drop its poisonous seeds any day now, and I will have to lock the horses in the barn until I get the seeds all cleaned up:

I walked into the barn one morning and found the two boys together in the hay, head to head and looking cute. It's apparent how attached they are to each other in spite of their quibbling and mischief:

 The sunflowers are almost finished. I've cut the tops out of many of them and others are going to seed already:

 Another photo of a Monarch butterfly in the Frans Hals Daylilies. It's ironic that the only place I can get a photo of a Monarch is on flowers of the same color:

 The littlest sunflowers, barely 6" tall:

I put the fantail pigeons on Craigslist, offering to sell 20 out of 43 of them. Alas, I've had no response, even after cutting the price in half:

 I took three vases of flowers to church, possibly the last of the season. This vase contained three colors of fragrant roses (orange, dark red and magenta), smallish sunflowers and red Mountain Maple leaves from the side of the road:

Blue and white wild Asters plus Birch leaves, all from the side of the road:

 Various colors of sunflowers plus red Mountain Maple leaves and Cattails from the side of the road:

This Post Is For The Birds

This post is about the birds - but not all birds, just the fantail pigeons and bantam hens. I'll begin with the pigeons. They have been prolific this year and, in spite of some deaths from old age, have increased in number to 43:

They began to look unhealthy, so I put anti-bacterial medication in their water for a week. It seemed to help a lot:

Then I cleaned their room, a job I do not look forward to. I now plan to attempt to sell about half of them, but haven't done so yet. Stay tuned:

The little hens seemed as healthy as could be, so they never got medication:

Their egg laying went down to an average of one per day (for the whole flock):

But they were healthy and happy, despite not being allowed to go outside:

But on the day I cleaned the pigeon and chicken rooms, I did let them outside. They seemed ridiculously happy, running and chasing bugs, rolling onto their sides to bask in the sun, strutting and clucking:

Alas, three of them began fighting like roosters. It didn't last, though, and hens don't have spurs like roosters, so I wasn't concerned (although I did break it up). They were soon friends again:

The little Easter Egger bantams went one way:

And ventured too close to the dog fence, where Seamus watched them and dreamed of chicken dinners:

And the Barred Rock bantams went off on their own:

When the cleaning was all done, I went out to bring the hens back inside and found feathers. I began to panic, thinking a fox had gotten another hen, but when I used a leaf rake to herd them all back inside, I learned that they were all there and in fine shape. I may let them out occasionally now that autumn is here:

Beauty As We Move Into Autumn

The little garden where I'd removed the giant stump (well, most of it anyway) was slowing down and the Yarrow appeared to be mostly finished blooming for the year:

 There were a few white flowered plants, but I feared they'd drop their seed and increase in number, so I cut off any remaining white flower stalks, leaving the fancier colors, which I prefer:

 The fantail pigeons have finished nesting and all the babies but one appeared to be on their own, no longer requiring their parents to feed them:

 Alas, they began to look kind of shopworn and unhealthy, so I put medication into their water:

The little hens still look plenty healthy, so I haven't given them any medication:

 Their egg laying has dropped to about one small egg per day. Soon it will be no eggs at all:

 Many flowers are still blooming, so I brought three more vases of them to church. This one included Frans Hals Daylilies, Tree Hydrangea and some of the very smallest sunflowers:

 Green sepals from former Rose Mallows, purple (wild) New England Asters, pink Rose Mallows, Tree Hydrangea and two colors of roses (magenta and orange):

All sunflowers, various sizes and colors:

 Far less attractive was the barn floor, soaked with horse urine and manure. I was able to scoop up most of it with the tractor, but had to fork it into the bucket as I got toward the end:

 A giant puffball appeared beneath the bottom wire of the electric fence alongside the gravel road. It grew rapidly. Last time one grew there, the Amish woman from down the road asked for it (many people love to eat them) but so far this year she hasn't asked. I don't find them edible at all. They look like Styrofoam and I found them to be just about as tasty as Styrofoam:

We've had a lot of Monarch butterflies this year. They are flying everywhere but don't generally hold still long enough for me to get a photo. This one landed on the Frans Hals Daylilies, and held still just long enough for me to get a picture:

The Wonderful World Of September

Sunflowers galore, with Seamus and Fergus watching from inside their fenced yard:

The fantail pigeon population has grown a great deal, with more births than deaths this summer. I will have to advertise some for sale very soon:

It takes many hours to mow the whole lawn and I am hoping this was the last mowing of the year. I parked the mower and came in for lunch and a nap before I resumed the job:

 
Japanese Knotweed may be one of the worst of all invasive species, but it is kind of pretty this time of year nonetheless:

And the sunflowers are glorious:

The tree on the north side of the house is producing Golden Delicious apples:

On the south side of the house, my dwarf Red Delicious produced - wait a minute, these are not Red Delicious apples! It turned out that a neighboring, taller tree had sent out a long branch which covered the dwarf tree:

The Rugosa roses are still blooming, but at this time of year, they have other colors to offer also:

Plantain-Leaved Sedge, also known as Seersucker Sedge has grown by the barn door for as long as I've been here, but I just learned what it was:

 If you wondered why it is sometimes called Seersucker Sedge, it is because the leaves are puckered/gathered, like seersucker fabric:

New York Asters began to bloom:

Every day I kept getting more and more sunflowers - and this despite the many I've cut for flower arrangements:

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: