Feeling blessed to be alive.

to work with sunrise behind me and purple clouds west

What a beginning to fall. I'm loving the change in weather. New tasks, new foods, new colors. Windy. I like the wind. Makes you feel alive when it flies in my face.

Oyster Mushrooms - second flush from store-bought box.

The mushrooms we tried at home worked pretty well. We started this box way back in August when Zoe and Ivy were visiting for the summer, but under non-ideal conditions and with traveling, we didn't get the first fruits until a month later. Not knowing exactly how or when to harvest, I think we cut the first few caps a little early. Then the rest of the fruit started to shrink so we ate it. But so far we've gotten 2 full flushes and a third, extra flush from more holes that I poked in the side that wasn't meant to be opened. Thanks Phoenix for keeping an eye on it for me in Tennessee.

Turkey for dinner!

When the ladies came back from Tennessee last time, I cooked up some turkey from the freezer. (Thanks Darrell). This bird was a good size! A breast and a thigh each went into the slow cooker and oven roaster. I tried the typical rosemary, sage, thyme and parsley in the roaster and new spicy Asian-style in the slow cooker with basil, ginger, garlic, onion, and cayenne. Both turned out great, but I especially liked the drippings from the new one!

Silver Maple (Acer saccharninum)

It's got a red stem, but it's not a sugar maple! The sinuses (indents) are deep and the lobes (points) are pretty pronounced. Silver maple! We welcome a million little seedlings as one of the great shade trees in our front yard has reached old age and has started dropping branches. The wood peckers are a sign that there's not much time left and luckily they're not too close to the house. Silver maples also turn yellow in fall while other maples (sugar, red) turn different hues of red. I guess the silvers are like the cottonwoods in that they like the bottom lands, feet a little wet, drop leaves early and turn yellow in fall.

Smiley Building getting a new (used) metal roof

The yellow barn, orange corn crib, or smiley building (so called because there's a smiley drawn on the side) had half metal and half old, rotting shake roof when we came to moonCat. Earlier this year and last year, we patched the Wick building roof that had fiberglass pieces blowing off.  I acquired a bunch of used metal siding from a co-worker a couple years back and it has worked great so far. Krystal, Darrell and I all pitched in for a little roof repair this fall. Here we're half done, but Krystal finished the last 3 or so sheets by herself! Also to our benefit, the existing screw holes lined up well with boards underneath this time, even if some of the old boards did need to be replaced.

While hauling metal around the farm, I stopped to say hi and welcome to this monarch. Not so much loving the thistle, but that's a worry for another day when the butterflies play.

Monarch  (Danaus plexippus) on Thistle - probably Bull Thistle (Cirsium vulgare)

And who should we find when re-doing the roof?! A gray tree frog. Funny story about them. They have two color phases - gray as seen here and green. Sort of like a redneck chameleon. Story: so we heard a raccoon on the roof of the house when we first moved in. Several nights they screeched right outside our window. But we never heard anything on the roof and never saw anything when we went out to investigate. But we did find tree frogs! Turns out they screech like raccoons, or so we think. Ever since we've enjoyed watching them catch bugs on the kitchen window and chill in the gutters and rain barrel. Ask Phoenix some time how she gives them water slide rides.

Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor)

And no, I don't know the Latin for everything off the top of my head :) It's looked up for my education and included here for your pleasure! Cheers and happy fall.