With the gardening done for the year, I have started walking to get my exercise. I hadn’t been around the edge of the property for months. I was surprised to see a volleyball by the asparagus bed. When I got closer, the volleyball changed into a giant puffball. We don’t see many of them these days. It was especially remarkable because of the long drought we’ve had. Fungi like it wet when they sprout their visible growth.

Giant puffball disguised as a volleyball

A shelf fungus has invaded a bald cypress. Bald cypress lose their needles each year, although I have my doubts about this one growing needles back next year. A tree is often mostly dead by the time a shelf fungus can invade it. The trunk had many “shelves”, which are the spore producing bodies. Shelves are at tiny part of the whole fungus, which is now growing throughout the tree.

Shelf fungus on a bald cypress trunk

In fact, a shelf had sprouted right out the end of a broken branch. I don’t recall ever seeing that before. This tree is in bad shape.

Shelf at the end of a branch, indicating total fungal invasion

Terry’s Osage orange trees are fruiting, in spite of their small size and relatively young age. 

Osage "oranges," which are actually green

The trees are wickedly thorny, which made them valuable for fences back in the day. A bird took advantage of the extra protection by building a nest in one of the trees. I’d guess it was a small bird that could slip in and out without impaling itself.

An extra-safe nest among the thorns

In the brush that borders the creek, the skeletons of numerous wild cucumbers hang on their vines.

Wild cucumber skeletons on the vine

The red maple forest turned yellow rather than red, then all the leaves blew off. Maybe it will be red next year.

The mostly leafless red maple forest

The river birch and bur oaks have lost almost all their leaves. The apple trees are still hanging on.

Leafless bur oak, right; naked river birch, back left; apple trees still green in front

Our bees disappeared in September along with the honey. We had pulled a few “supers” before the exodus. We spun them down on a warm day and got a big bowl of honey.

Over 10 pounds of unfiltered honey

I filtered it through an impeccably clean soil sieve

Filtering the honey

And poured it into 12 canning jars. The last jar was only ¾ full. Still, it had to be a good 10 pounds of honey. Terry suggested taking next year off, since we probably have a lifetime supply.

So many jars of honey!

Jane came up for our annual Halloween burn on Saturday. I invited others, but it was a busy weekend for everyone. Jane wanted to make pumpkin sugar cookies (contain no actual pumpkin). Jewel had Halloween-themed decorative sprinkles on sale, and we had to try them out. There were two kinds of jimmies, black sugar, orange sugar, and mixed ghosts, pumpkins, bats, and green circles (ectoplasm? Snot?).

Pumpkin sugar cookies with decorations

“The bats look like mouse turds,” Jane remarked. So did the black jimmies. 

After lunch, we went back to the fire ring. It was a perfect day for a fire. The wind was just strong enough to keep the fire burning, but not so strong that it lit the whole woods on fire. Good thing, as dry as it’s been. Terry started the fire with gasoline and a lighter. Whoosh! In a few minutes, we removed our coats and moved our chairs back to keep the knees of our pants from burning up.

The fire

There is a half-dead box elder near the fire ring. Various parts of it have singed our burned outright over the years. The wind was blowing the heat in that tree’s direction. “I’m surprised that tree hasn’t caught fire,” I said to Jane. “I thought it would.”

Half-dead box elder tree near the fire ring

As I continued to watch, however, I saw smoke rising from the side of the stump. I said, "Wait. It is on fire. Or there's a squirrel over there having a cigarette break."

Smoke rising from the stump

I got up to inspect it. Sure enough, it was smoldering. I called to Terry, “This tree is on fire. Should we be concerned?”

Smoldering center of the dead part of the tree

“No,” he replied from a distance. “It’ll be fine.”

After he walked over to where I was standing, he changed his mind. “Oh. Yeah, you’d better put that out.”

“On it.”

I got the water sprayer and went at it. The smoke was coming not only from the part that I could see but also from a deep crack. I gave it a good soaking as far down as I could manage. We didn’t see any more smoke.

Spraying down the fire with water

Years ago, Terry carved a chicken with his chainsaw. As time passed, the chicken developed lichens and cracks. Terry moved it to a stump by the fire to await its eventual incineration. Jane thought it looked like an ancient statue, Chicken God of the Fire Ring.

All hail mighty Chicken God!

We put on as much brush as we wanted to get rid of. When it burned down, Jane and I returned to the house to do a jigsaw puzzle while Terry stayed back to turn the fire and be sure “it wasn’t going nowhere.” 

It was a beautiful and relaxing afternoon.

Ready for winter

 It is not clear to me how I ever had time for a job. It is the end of October. By now, the semester would be in Week 11 of 16, and I have just finished the list of things I needed to do outside to get ready for winter. I have washed the pots and trays, cleaned the greenhouse, and pulled the spent vegetables from the garden. The landscape cloth is rolled up and stored, as are all the drip irrigation lines. I put the strawberries to bed by covering them with straw and row cover to keep the straw from blowing away. The garlic is planted and similarly covered with straw and row cover. How did I do all that when I only had weekends? (I miss my mom. She helped a lot.)

Two raised beds of strawberries (foreground), Brussels sprouts and garlic in the main garden.

I am done with apples. I have dried apples, made and canned three batches of apple butter, and cooked gallons of applesauce. I started the applesauce process with modest intentions. I made enough for my needs and told myself that I’d done the last batch. But there were so many apples! I had the thought that I would share and made one more batch, definitely the last. The apples were just too good to let rot, so I made a third last batch. I mean it this time.

The third last batch: Six pints + one cup applesauce with
applesauce pot and food mill to take out the lumps

I can’t say for certain, but I think Lucky laid her first egg on Saturday. It is larger than the usual first pullet egg, but smaller than the average hen’s egg. Another indication was that we had two green/blue eggs in one day, which we haven’t seen since Goldie and Silvia started laying again.

Putative pullet egg from Lucky, upper left, with hen eggs for comparison

Speaking of, Silvia is looking good, having grown back her beard feathers since her molt.

The newly-feathered Silvia

In other signs of fall, the corn has been harvested across the road. I’m not sure what they were doing yesterday other than making a lot of noise and filling the air with dust. They took the corn the day before. Terry thought they were picking up stover (the parts of the corn plant that are not the ear).

Cleaning up the cornfield across the road

The milkweed pods have dehisced, a fancy word for “split open.” Milkweed fluff is everywhere. And milkweed seedlings will be everywhere come spring.

Dehiscent milkweed pods

Terry has decorated the front entrance with his pumpkins, Michigan holly, and Osage orange fruit. It looks very festive.

Home-grown seasonal decorations

Happy Halloween!

Eggs at last

 While the rain drought deepens (no rain for a month now), the egg drought seems to be over! Our two Ameraucanas, Silvia and Goldie, have resumed laying blue eggs, and we are getting two to four eggs a day again. Lucky still seems to show no interest in transitioning from pullet to hen.

Three eggs, including a blue one

We’ve had frosts the last two nights. The cold temperatures are supposed to make Brussels sprouts sweeter. They have been slow to develop this year, perhaps because they are not fond of heat. Some of them are finally taking off, and I plan to harvest some this afternoon.

Long-awaited Brussels sprouts

Others persist in being slackers. I have no hope for them, as the lateral buds are showing no signs of developing. I planted two varieties, but performance did not sort out neatly as one variety being consistently better than the other. I am perplexed. I might be planning them too close together.

Underachiever

I started cleaning out the north garden. The tomatoes and tomato cages are out. I’ve pulled up most of the drip lines and some of the landscape cloth. It’s dusty work with the ground so dry, but it’s better than doing it in mud. I meant to have it all cleaned out by now, but I was distracted by applesauce and apple butter. So many apples.

Partially cleaned garden

I won’t have to trim the strawberry leaves before I cover the beds with straw this winter. The deer have done an excellent job of that.

Deer-trimmed strawberry bed

Two of my tomato plants in the high tunnel are living in their heads. They refuse to acknowledge the coming of autumn. I got sick of picking/processing tomatoes weeks ago, but Terry refused to give up. He says he is still picking red tomatoes, which he is finding homes for. He must be doing a good job, as I haven’t seen any that are taking on any color at all. Conventional wisdom suggests that tomatoes need a longer day to ripen.

Tomatoes in the high tunnel that won't quit

Last year we had a giant evening primrose that got as tall as the tractor shed. I expected lots of primrose in that area this summer, given the millions of tiny seeds that primrose dropped everywhere. My flower book says they bloom from June through September, but they obviously did not read the book. They did finally appear at the end of September. Like the tomatoes, they are living in their heads. It does not seem that the seed pods will ripen before the killing frost. Hard to say, though, because it’s supposed to warm up again in a couple of days.

Late blooming evening primrose

We don’t have much fall color here. The trees along the creek are mostly box elder, which merely turn brown and shrivel up. The red maples are still green. We do have one sassafras tree, which I think is from a seed collected from the big sassafras that grew in the yard of my childhood home. It’s a good story, anyway. This tree is brilliantly red (mostly).

Sassafras tree

Sassafras has three kinds of leaves. I learned them as “mittens.” The mittens can have one thumb, two thumbs or no thumbs. Our tree has mostly no thumbs or two thumbs. It was hard to tell, though, because there has been a lot of nibbling.

Zero- and two-thumbed mitten leaves

I really am going to finish cleaning up the garden this weekend. Really! It will be no fun at all if the ground freezes. Also, I’ve got to get the garlic planted. Time goes so fast.

Fall Molt

 Moving the hens to their winter coop late has had consequences. The main reason we do it is to give them artificial light because they will stop laying with less than 14-hour days. I neglected to think of the other day length cue—molting. Many birds molt seasonally. Some do it to change to and from breeding colors. Others, including chickens, do it to replace worn and damaged feathers prior to winter's cold. Molting and lack of egg laying are two sides of the same coin. Hens have resources to grow new feathers or lay eggs, but not both. For most of September, day after day I’d find piles of feathers under the roost in the morning. Five of the eight hens looked more bedraggled by the day.

Silvia and Luella. Note Silvia's unkempt appearance and
downy feathers peeking through on Luella's chest.

Trudy is losing her characteristic bronze feathers with black edge. 
She is a golden Wyandott like Luella, above, and should look the same.

Goldie having a bad feather day

Close up of wing feathers growing in

Someone who (I suspect) spends too much time on the internet told me that molting is painful for chickens, and you shouldn’t pick them up while they are growing feathers. I was skeptical. I did some googling and found words like “sensitive,” which could be interpreted as painful, but how maladaptive would that be? Feathers are analogous to hair in mammals. Hair doesn’t hurt when it grows. I have observed my chickens preening constantly (poking at their skin and pulling their feathers through their beak). To me, it looks like molting itches, which would be annoying enough, certainly. Bad news—molting takes 8 to 12 weeks. We may not have extra eggs until Thanksgiving.

Frankie preening or scratching itches. Hard to tell

Lucky doesn’t molt. She’s too young. She’s grown into a pretty young lady. She is not showing any signs of getting ready to lay, more’s the pity.

Lucky

Her feathers are iridescent green when the sun hits at a certain angle. It doesn’t show up well in the picture, but it’s impressive in person.

Lucky's iridescent feathers

The silver Wyandotts also don’t seem to be molting, but I can’t explain why. They don’t look like they’re missing feathers.

The two silver Wyandotts, Dottie (left) and Bonnie

Right now, we get 0, 1 or 2 eggs a day. It takes more than a week to accumulate a dozen. I know for a fact that Goldie and Silvia are not laying as we have not gotten a blue egg in over a month. I think that only Bonnie and Dottie are laying. We seem to be getting only two kinds of eggs. One is normal and the other is an odd elongated shape. I don’t know which one lays which. For now, we’re just grateful for what we get.

Same breed, two egg colors and shapes. A mystery.

Boundary Waters Days 5 and 6

 On Thursday of vacation, we had eggs with stuff, fried corn and potatoes, and bacon. I hoped the julienned potatoes would take on a hashbrown-like presentation, but it turned out the julienned does not equal grated.

Breakfast

We finished breakfast at 11:30 and proceeded directly to Sydney’s for a Turtle Sundae lunch. The custard was smooth and lovely as usual. The caramel sauce was delicious. But they were low on hot fudge and what the server scraped off the bottom of the warmer pot was burned. The pecans were neither roasted nor salted. We were disappointed.

Jane eats a less-than-satisfactory turtle sundae

I took a bazillion pictures of the gulls on the beach trying to decide if they were ring-billed or herring. I think it might have been a mix. Some of the gulls definitely had a black stripe on their bills.

Ring-billed gulls?

We did some shopping, picking up our 2025 calendars from Betsy Bowan. We had leftover brats for supper with margaritas. After supper, we put together out last jigsaw, “Summer Gazebo.”

Summer Gazebo

Friday was a day to just unwind at the cabin. We had pancakes for breakfast and “smorgasbord” (eat what you can find) for the rest of the day. 

Last pancakes, last peach

It rained sometimes and misted sometimes. We were not inclined to go anywhere. We only left the cabin to pay our bill and book the first week in August next summer.

We packed. We slept. We drove home Saturday.

Boundary Waters, Day 4

 We started Wednesday, Aug. 7 with Eggs ‘n’ Stuff (garden fresh tomatoes, onion, green peppers) and bacon. The only bread we had was brat buns, which were excellent fried in butter.

Eggs 'n' Stuff

The main activity for the day was our annual visit to the Chik-Wauk Nature Center. They had a new exhibit this year—a trapping cabin down by the water. The trail was not exactly handicapped accessible. Jane got down okay, but there was a moment when we weren’t sure she would get back up. That first step was a doozy.

Trapper's cabin by the lake

The cabin excited my imagination. It was tiny, but had everything a man would need except social interaction. You’d have to be a loner to begin with to choose such a profession, and the isolation was likely to make you quirkier. I expect many of them were known as “characters.”

Inside of the cabin, spare, but adequate

Various traps hung on one wall along with a long board that might have been some kind of sled.

Traps

The room was heated by a cheaply-constructed, light-weight stove, according to a plaque. The trappers preferred them because (obviously) they were easier to transport to remote parts of the wilderness.

A typical but hazardous trapper's stove

The downside was that the stoves got wicked hot and tended to burn the shack down. There’s always a catch.

The cabin as displayed seemed to have adequate space to move around. I read the information about a trapper’s life and imagined what it would look like with pelts stacked everywhere. Furthermore, what would that smell like? Not good. A trapper could work all winter and have the whole stash go up in smoke from the tin-can stove. Tough life.

Before we left, we admired some tiny ferns at the side of the parking lot. Jane is fond of tiny ferns.

Tiny ferns growing on a hill

I made something new for supper that turned out very well. I sauteed a chicken breast with green beans, garlic, peppers, onion, and cherry tomatoes. Basil would have been a good addition, but it does not travel well. I threw in some cooked penne at the end.

Supper

After supper, we did the next jigsaw, “Colorful Harvest.”

"Colorful Harvest"

For dessert, we had scones with blueberry and peach compote. It was another lovely day.

Scones, blueberries, and peaches
(Don't be shocked by the plastic spoon. We've been using the same ones for years)