Payment Due

"If you play, you pay."  I wasn't playing, but due to circumstances I couldn't milk the goats the other day.  Holy cow (or in this case, goat), those girls were full yesterday!  Thankfully, it was another cool day so it wasn't so bad to keep them on the stand while I worked twice as hard and long to get each one milked out.  I'm sure they were relieved to be delivered of that load they were carrying.  We all paid for that one-day lapse.

Betty is becoming more independent.  She still comes to be picked up, but lately she wants down off my lap when we sit for a little chat so I just carry her around for a bit and then send her off to play with the other hens.  Like sending a kid off to school, it's hard to see my little girl growing up.

With the mild weather of the last few days, Bessie Anne and I are once again sitting out on the end of the deck.  We watch the vultures riding on the thermals and listen to the woodpeckers boring holes to store their feed for winter.  A murder of crows (what an unfortunate name for a group of these birds) has moved in to the neighborhood and caw like crazy.

John Dear sits gathering dust in his shed.  We're both looking forward to that first rain so he and I can get some outdoor exercise.  It would be pleasant to go round and round while it's cool, but the vegetation is so dry that the fire danger is still high.  The sound of a low-flying airplane or helicopter still sends me outside to look for smoke.  We're not out of those woods yet.

Temperatures are predicted to rise again, but it was nice to have even a brief preview of fall.