Autumn’s Chill

Yesterday morning the house felt chilly. I tried to be tough. If we can keep the thermostat low, we save on propane. However, I couldn’t get warm so I finally told EJ that I was going to turn the thermostat up a digit or two. He laughed and said that the furnace wasn’t on.

“What do you mean it isn’t on?”
“It’s not on.”
“You mean it has been off all night???”
“Yes.”

Yikes. That’s why I was so cold.

A few days ago the daytime high had reached into the mid-70s so we had opened the windows. EJ had obviously turned off the furnace then, which makes sense. However, the furnace hadn’t been turned back on and the temperature had been in the low 30s the night before; it was only in the 40s when I finally decided to turn the heat up. I turned the furnace on, pushing it up to 65. Today EJ was chilly and turned the furnace up another three digits.

The forecast for last night was for a possibility of snow. It was supposed to stop before daylight and not be enough to stick on the ground so I don’t know if it actually snowed or not. I told EJ that if it did snow, Winter has metaphorically drawn first blood. It won’t be long before it’s here to stay. We are never fully ready for Winter’s arrival although we enjoy it when we adjust to it.

Today was chilly and blustery. Sometimes we had sunshine and sometimes a burst of rain fell. At times we even had rain when the sun was shining. That’s Michigan for ya. I wore a winter coat and hat for the first time today. I’d say that t-shirt and shorts weather has come to an end.

Sunday EJ picked the rest of the vegetables from the garden and then we opened the gate and let the chickens in to glean any leftovers. It’s pleasant to look out the bedroom and see them happily eating and scratching.

I really enjoy being able to combine several of my trail camera footage into one video. Often several videos tell a story that can’t be captured by just one photo or video. I especially like the interactions between different kinds of animals, such as in the following video. For some reason, there is a fuzzy segment in the video even though the original is not fuzzy at all. I tried for hours over several days to get it right before finally giving up. Sometimes the program I use to combine videos works very well, but other times it doesn’t work very well at all, which is very frustrating. It hasn’t worked well lately. My computer is boggy and the program keeps crashing on me. But, whatever. Because I had such trouble with it, I didn’t try any fancy transitions between segments. Here’s the video:

FYI: That thing on top of the black bird feeder pole is a sunflower. EJ harvested them a week ago and I stuck one on top of the pole for the birds and squirrels.

Although some stories play out in front of the trail camera, some stories happen out of range. For example, yesterday morning I was outside on the deck attempting to entice the chickadees to eat seeds from my hand. It requires patiently holding still so I don’t scare them off. Usually after 4-6 chickadees have eaten from my hand, I replenish all the feeders and go back into the house. Once the feeders are filled, the birds aren’t as motivated to come to me. I was about ready to replenish the feeders when I looked up and saw a couple of fawns walk into the orchard. I continued holding still with my seed-filled hand stretched out so I would spook neither the wild birds nor the deer. (The chickadees kept landing on my hand.) The fawns were very curious. They were nervous but not alarmed. They kept looking at me and stomped a few times but I held still. After quite a long time, the Mama finally joined her fawns. She was more nervous and after a few moments of looking at me, she went back into the forest and her fawns followed her. EJ watched from inside the house but none of that was captured on the trail cam.

Our trees are finally getting some autumn color. Here is what it looked like yesterday afternoon in our orchard. There were mourning doves on the ground and deer were beginning to emerge from the forest: Autumn Afternoon