DUST AND FLIES

 

Smoke to the south

We’re here at the farmhouse for a brief stay. We found no mice in traps but plenty of dust, dead flies, and wasps. Disgusting! And in town, the blue aphids (October bugs) are multiplying rapidly. There’s something to be said for a warm autumn, but a hard freeze would do much to solve my bug woes. We anticipate a change in the weather by Saturday. I’m ready.

The day started out hazy, and a friend in town said it was hazy there, too. But this afternoon I’d have to say it’s downright smoky. I hear there’s a fire in the Riggins area. I just don’t know where it comes from, but we have plenty of it.

We got here at 5:30 yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon, and Mike got his work done while I fixed supper. Then he couldn’t sleep, so in the middle of the night he went to his shed to work on a bicycle. He has no electricity there, though, so I don’t know exactly how he managed.

Mike and I watched a bunny in the yard near the barn this morning. Mike got the binoculars for a better look, and then I spotted something large moving in the grass. Turned out to be the male, and he was big! We figured those two were the pair. Mike saw a little one in the barn yesterday, he said, so I guess you know those rabbits are raising a family there – and raising a family, and raising a family . . .

"I think we should go back."

Now that harvest is over, we can walk across the fields again. Chuck wondered why the canola field looked so dark in the last set of farm pictures, so today I went out to investigate. Basically, it’s stubble now, and a lot of ground shows through. In sunlight, it appears tawny, but as shadows and darkness fall, it looks dark, as you can see in the photos.

"I'll just wait here for you -- maybe."

 

So, I took the camera and went for a walk this afternoon. Bess and Mike hunted for two hours this morning, and I knew she was tired, but she said she’d love to walk around the pond. So, around the pond we went. And then I said I wanted to go out across the south field. “Okay,” she said tentatively, but when we got so far from the house, she said she didn’t really want to go farther. I walked on to get a picture of the smoke-filled canyon before rejoining Bess and returning to the house. KW