Tuesday October 12th, 2010
Greetings and welcome!
It is another spectacular Fall day outside. The sun is shining, and the temp is almost up to 63. This wonderful Fall weather in the 60s and 70s has been great for the past week.
It is easy to forget how ugly that it could be right now, and expect this weather all of the time. I recall the year that I painted up the photo van. I was shooting the top coat still at 10pm on Oct 10th. The 11th brought four or five inches of short lived snow, and the temp never went back above 50 that fall. We have it pretty good this year.
The fall colors are in their late prime. The red oaks are red indeed. The aspens came into golds and yellows this week. Between those, the sumacs, and the color from the underbrush there is still some fall color going on. The woods is getting pretty thin on leaves, but there is still some late stuff. Yesterday I saw that the tamaracks are changing over to gold, and those always add a nice splash of color.
The ferns and field grasses have died back and the waist high green fields of summer are now brown and mostly laying down.
I have not had too many wildlife sightings since the last visit here. Probably the high point was when I spotted what I ID’d as a falcon or kestrel when we were out cutting firewood Saturday.
I will admit that my bird of prey identification, like my tree identification, needs work. I haven’t had a botany class in 20 years, so telling an aspen from a cottonwood (all called popple around here) is not my strong suit. I didn’t even know we had American Kestrels and Peregrine Falcons around here until a few years ago. One of these days I have to sit down and do a little studying.
The big action with the wildlife recently has been inside. This must be the year of the mouse. I am not the only one that has been overrun by them. I have never seen so many. I fixed the hole that they chewed behind the shower drain, I ran a trap line, and it still wasn’t enough. I finally gave up on the traps and went for the D-Con. That worked, and I have been mouse free for a couple of days.
Outside the vermin of the day award probably should go to the gnats. They are hit and miss, but when you hit they are plentiful. There are also some rather aggressive house flies that quickly enter the house when the door opens.
Beyond those minor annoyances, it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, the weather has been great recently.
This week and last week has brought a lot of inside work. I have a few snowmobile club web sites in process, my glow in the dark store, and I have been really stepping up the computer service/repair and WiFi business.
I am getting pretty nervous about my outside work not getting done, so I am considering turning the computers off for a few days off later this week to tackle pre-winter preparations outside. I might not have a Friday report as a result. History shows that it usually doesn’t work out that way, there is always something for you to be aware of, and I end up doing a report.
It is also getting to be that time of season that I stop updating here and head over to the snowmobiling page. There isn’t snow yet, but there are a lot of events and preparations going on. People are well aware of the pending season and interest is up. I don’t think that this is my last report here for the season, but it is one of them.
An example is this week. I don’t have any local events for this weekend, but the Snowmobile USA show is in Milwaukee this weekend. There is also a Bear Point Sno-Cruiser’s snowmobile club meeting this Saturday too.
Looking at the GFS, we have a little rain expected for tomorrow, then more nice weather until early next week. There are chances for the first snowflakes about 10/24 and a better chance about 10/29.
That is about it from here. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB
