Labour Day Weekend Dawns

The sunrise was tardy and even then was disappointingly dismal due to rain clouds still hovering on the horizon. I am now seeing a sliver of sunshine so perhaps David Spence and I will not get divorced this weekend. I was making breakfast and while I was waiting for my toast to pop I was admiring my apple tree where the apples are looking bigger and redder than last weekend. Perhaps I will be able to harvest them on Monday and start making applesauce and pies with them. It’s a bumper crop for me although that would mean perhaps 50 apples. Sadly this part of the country struggles with fruit trees due to the Chinooks. Nature is confused in this part of the world. So are people!

I haven’t seen much in the way of wildlife this year; the deer from last weekend was the first fellow I’ve seen in my yard this year. Usually they come visit me several times during the summer but I believe the wilderness of weeds in my back 40 have deterred them (or perhaps that is where they are hiding and I just can’t see them?) I haven’t heard any coyotes this summer which seems odd and the magpies have all seemingly disappeared. I had heard some shotgun firing in July so perhaps my neighbour took to shooting them. Down the road a ways I have seen a lot of quail, at last I think they are quail. They look a lot smaller than the pheasants I usually see lurking in the shrubs. One day I did see a creature that at first I thought was a racoon (I was driving by rather quickly) but afterwards thought it might be a badger. It was quite huge. That is one creature I am deathly afraid of. My father told us farmers in Denmark would go out with coal in their boots to hunt badgers because those devils would bite into a person until they heard the crunch of your bones. Shiver. That just creeps me out. I saw some in the zoo once and they were screaming, irritable creatures. I hurried past them.

We’ve had masses and masses of dragonflies this year. First the bigger blue ones and lately they have been the golden orange, smaller ones. I’ve also had a lot of white butterflies (really they are moths, I know) this summer and now I see the smaller orange moths. My rose leaves have been quite chewed up but this year I left them alone as I think it does more harm to treat the plant than have insects eat them. The result has been some really gorgeous long stemmed yellow roses. Go figure! And my once pale pink roses are deep red this year due to a good dose of horse manure, I’m thinking. My evergreen trees have taken a huge leap forward which is likely due to the unusually wet season we’ve had.

There is no breeze stirring the leaves on the trees so I think it’s a good time for me to go for a long walk before I start my weekend chores!