a man and his hoe

Day by day, frost softens the things it touches. Frost makes the leaves look like soft, supple leather. Dust feathered leaves look soft and cuddly. These cold, clear mornings we are having make for invigorating morning walks.

Japan is famous for its fall colors. Tourists from all over the world travel there to walk through temple grounds, resplendent in their colorful foliage. The beauty lingers even after the leaves fall to the ground. When there are more leaves on the ground than in the trees, it is time to visit the temples to see the 散紅葉 – chiri-momiji, which loosely translates to “scattered fall leaves”.

The 散紅葉 – chiri-momiji here are as colorful as when the leaves were waving in the wind on the branches. BB isn’t that interested in the fallen leaves. He’s more interested in the interesting smells he finds coming out of a mole hill.

You know, if zoos wanted to attract more visitors, they would make special paths just for dogs. They’d pepper the paths with dung from lions, tigers, zebras, hippos, gorillas, kudu, impala, Komodo dragons, and all the other animals they keep. Dogs would go nuts sniffing out the droppings of creatures wilder than anything in their dog dreams. These could be off leash areas. You could bring your dog to the zoo, affix a tag with a number to them, and set them free. While your dog goes on an adventure of a life time, sniffing and frolicking through all manner of dung, you’d enjoy your own visit to the zoo, looking at the animals. At the end of your visit, you could pick up your dog, who most likely would be wondering why you’re back so early. It still needs hours to explore the dung piles.

Nina is not concerned with the fall leaves. She’s got eggs to hatch. She started sitting on her eggs last week. There are only three eggs, and it is very late in the season to be hatching chicks. She won’t be the first hen here to hatch eggs in December. When a hen has the urge, she has the urge.

Special is a beautiful hen, but is she more beautiful than colorful Svenda? It doesn’t matter if one is more beautiful than the other. If you stare at their feathers, it almost looks like they aren’t feathers, but brush patterns. You can easily imagine a painting style called “chicken feathering” where brush patterns resemble chicken feathers.

The first snow of the season on the foothills filled today’s bike ride to the post office with beauty. The cold wind flowing down the Fraser Canyon in British Columbia made holding the camera still a challenge. Mt. Baker’s bare, craggy rocks are no more. The whole peak is swathed in deep snow. On the slopes of Mt. Baker, the marmots and pikas are deep in their dens. The marmots are probably hibernating already while the pikas stay warm in their burrows, munching on the grasses and herbs they collected and dried during the summer.

Margaret and her chicks are far from hibernating. This is her second clutch this year. Her chicks are perfectly capable of being on their own, but she still dotes on them, making sure they are out of harms way as they scratch and peck their way through the compost pile I turned today. They will be two months old on Thanksgiving. The other day, two of her chicks were having a sibling fight and I watched her break them up. If one lags behind too far, she’ll go looking for it and tell it to hurry along.