Sept 21- Almost Autumn

The leaves are slowly turning color on the trees. I went for a walk along the trail to the beach today with Spirit , our dog and Lexy one of our cats.  I love the sound of the crunch of dry leaves under my runners and the twitter of the little chickadees in the tree branches. It was so quiet and peaceful! Not a soul was on the beach or on the water; no motors of boats and seadoos breaking the silence. Not one other human being on the shore as far as my eyes could see.

There were a few ducks bobbing around on the gentle waves, and our dog created a few ripples herself as she sat in the shallow water close to the shore. I sat at the picnic table there leaning my elbows on the top as I enjoyed the splendid view. Lexy sat under the picnic table in the shade patiently waiting for me to start back up the trail for home.

Buffalo Lake from Picnic Hill

It's September 21st and the temperature today reached 24 C! The rest of the week is supposed to be even hotter with +27 on Sunday! Not sure what's going on here with the weather. We have not had more than the tiniest skiff of a rain shower in the last 5 weeks!  The leaves are still mostly green and have only started turning color in a few spots. Maybe this unseasonable warm weather is confusing them into thinking it's not fall yet. (Technically the first day of fall isn't until Friday.)

 The lawn is turning brown in many places except for the part directly above the septic field. The flower beds are in constant need of watering. My Gardenia sprinkler is acting up and it doesn't want to ossilate anymore. It just sits there shooting sprays of water high in the air on the same spot.  I bought a new sprinkler in town this afternoon, a Yardworks this time and it ossilates just fine, but it hardly has any pressure at all and even on the 'large' setting it hardly wets very much.

Diligent husband checked all the hoses and settings and so on when he came home, but nothing seems to help. This Yardworks sprinkler is going back to the store. I knew I should have bought the one that is $10 more!

We are going away for a week to visit family in another province and I hate to leave my flower beds at Mother Nature's mercy. We have someone coming to feed the pets and water the tomato plants in the greenhouse, but when we planned this trip we weren't counting on anyone having to water the flower beds and veggie garden this late in September...  We usually have had a few frosts by now and most of the flowers would have been zapped. It's great to still have them looking so fabulous!

A male gold finch eating the seeds from the spent sunflowers

We have harvested most of the above ground veggies out of the garden, although there are still 6 tomato plants there ( as well as beets, carrots, potatoes and swiss chard.)  We harvested 7 little butternut squashes and 2 spaghetti squashes. Not a bad haul for a few seeds that I planted last March! :)

Happy fall clean up! :)