And then...it was Winter

No,not a black and white photo. Just a black and white landscape.

The sun setting on Fall just a short week ago.

I had intended to do a post entitled "And then there were none", referring to the leaves. That would still be an appropriate title of course, the vast majority of the leaves are gone, but a funny thing happened on the way to that post. It snowed. We only got about 2-3 inches, but 50 miles to our West in the Adirondacks they got over a foot. So the shovels are out, I finally got the last of the wood stacked on the porch and the garden is definitively put to bed. I leave again for Benin, Africa today where the temperatures are about 100 during the day with a humidity of 63 percent. That contrasts with a high of 39 degrees here yesterday. Just a 60 degree differential. Shouldn't be any problem at all acclimating. I'll be back 1 December. Hopefully it won't snow so much while I'm gone that I can't find the house when I get back.

Table Manners of the Eastern Chipmunk

Not having access to reusable, sustainable and all organic shopping bags, the eastern chipmunk uses its cheek pouches to haul the groceries home.

I have sometimes been accused of stuffing too much into my mouth, scarfing my meals down in a matter of nano-seconds. I blame this habit on the Army where before any meal no one says "bon appetit" as the French do, but rather "get it and go" as in, why are you taking so long? But even with my tendency to scarf food, I'm an amateur food-stuffer compared to the eastern chipmunk. I offer the photo above as evidence.

Fade to ... Yellow.

Say hello to yellow.

Framed by our quaking aspen, some late season reds and oranges peek over the treeline .

Even the ferns are turning yellow.

A highly colored beech behind the house.

After a pretty good color season so far, the maple trees are really starting to shed their leaves and leave the stage to the aspens, birches and beeches. All of these trees tend to have yellow leaves in the fall although the beech has a pretty pronounced brownish-orange tinge. I miss the reds of the maples, but the new stars of the show look like bright splashes of flame across the backdrop of the hemlocks and firs. We're headed to southern Vermont this weekend, and we'll see if the colors down there are worth any pictures.

The "Bounty" of our Harvest

Our Winter stock of corn. Could be grim.

None of our pumpkins won first prize at the county fair.

The apples on our old apple trees seem to do fine without any help from us.

Just a random shot of the house.

O.K., American Gothic we're not although we did spend a lot of time, energy and money on the garden this year. With mixed results I have to admit. The greens and the tomatoes did pretty well. The cucumbers threatened to overwhelm us. The herbs and our first year strawberries on the other hand were pretty much a bust. The black-eyed peas that I planted (late unfortunately) grew tall and strong and produced narry a bean. The pumpkins and the butternut squash produced only laughter or pity. The corn I planted was, happily, only for decoration because there wasn't enough of it to keep a chicken alive through the Winter. Still and all, we did get our raised beds built, the strawberry patch promises many more fruit next year, and we learned a lot from our mistakes. It would have been a pretty satisfying year except that with what we spent on the garden, we could have financed our vegetable needs for the next 10 years at the supermarket. On the bright side, we don't have to actually live off of what we raise.

Fire Season

One of our first "cheery" fires burns happily away.

Some of the colors that accompany the coming of cool weather.

A lonely adolescent merganser makes a pit stop on the pond as he flees the coming of Winter.

It's fire season here in the North Country in more ways than one. On the one hand, with the coming of cool weather, cheery fires are burning in fireplaces and wood stoves all over the region. On the other hand, lots of buildings tend to burn down at this time of year, mainly because of all those cheery fires in fireplaces and wood stoves. That and the electric space heaters. It can be a grim choice here in the Winter, either freeze to death or burn up in a raging inferno that was once your house. We've opted for the second option and have had fires the last three days.

Encounters of a Porcupine Kind

On our way to see Pauly the porcupine.

A porcupine showing off the latest in pain inducing coiffures.

Four of the little gifts Pauly left Nella. The dark end is the business end.

Late this afternoon I took the dogs out for their last walk of the day, and we decided to do a short loop up through the woods. When we were 20 yards or so from where the trail runs into the neighbors gravel road before looping back into the woods, the dogs took off in a flash and accosted something on the road. I called them back and went up to investigate. By the time I got to the road, a large porcupine had scrambled into the treeline on the other side and was busy climbing out of reach. The porcupine climbed a good 30 feet up the tree before stopping. Now safe from the porcupine's quills, the dogs barked and jumped up on the tree, ready to tear the porcupine limb from limb (as long as the porcupine stayed up the tree with his rather painful defensive mechanism). In the initial encounter Nella managed to collect a half dozen quills which I pulled out before heading home. The quills are not only sharp and numerous, they are barbed at the end, so pulling them takes a little effort. Nella was very brave and let me jerk them out without so much as a whimper. The good news in all of this? It wasn't a skunk we ran into.

Out of Africa and into Peak Color

When I did my last post, Summer was in full swing, but the first colors of Fall were starting to peek out from under a blanket of green. What a difference a month makes! I returned from my working jaunt in Benin, Africa to find Fall in firm control and the colors rioting across the landscape. The question of course is whether we are already at "peak color". Up here in the North Country the concept of "peak color" is much debated and very important. Peak color is a mythical moment when the Fall colors are their most vibrant, most beautiful and most plentiful. It's a fragile moment that a strong wind, too much rain, not enough rain, above average heat, above average cold, inadequate sunspot activity, earthquakes or large swamp gas releases can adversely affect. There is never broad agreement each year about when we have reached peak color although most people can come to an agreement about when it has passed. As a flatlander, I have never had the privilege of witnessing peak color although native vermonters promise me I will some day if I manage to live here for at least 20 years. Still and all, I would have to say that in our little corner of Vermont we have reached peak color or something very close. That's not true West of us where Lake Champlain moderates the temperatures, and peak color is probably long gone up along the Canadian border. We're going to take a drive up the Mad River Valley this Sunday to see how the colors look over there. Updates to follow.

p.s. It was the rainy season in Benin and apparently it's the rainy season here as well since it's rained every day since I got back.