a man and his hoe

Simple minds get pleasure from simple things. On October 29 I looked up and saw this curved contrail up in the sky. And in the lower left of the picture you can see another curved contrail. You see something like that and you stop what you are doing to investigate. At least I do.

The contrails were those of NASA flights which took off from Everett and were making a figure eight flight path from Everett, WA, all the way to Central Washington and back. They flew this pattern for many hours before returning to Everett.

It does make me wonder what they were testing and why the figure eight flight patterns instead of simple loops.

October finished out with days of warm sunshine. I took this photo of Mount Baker on October 30. I grew up with forested hills and mountains around, and the ocean nearby. Which is why I can’t live on flatland. If I can’t see mountains around, my soul withers away. But with wondrous Mount Baker nearby, I can breathe and live.

Snow Geese and Swans are back. So it should be much colder than it is. After the frosts in October, unseasonably warm weather returned.

The chickens enjoy the warm weather, though they’ve pretty much stopped laying until early spring. I’m working on converting grass to wild meadow. Where I got some wild meadow seed said to rip out the grass. I’m letting the chickens do a first pass at that. They are skilled at converting beautiful grass into bare dirt. All you have to do is get the right ratio of chickens to grass footage, and in short time you will have bare dirt to plant your meadow seeds.

And look at the big Nashi 梨 (Asian pear) I picked today. 567 grams! 20 ounces. One and a quarter pounds. I think it is the biggest one I picked this year. There are still a few on the tree so there may be one even bigger.

When the baby fruits form, there are usually 3 to 5 in a cluster. I left only one per cluster, removing at least 75% of the baby fruits. And this is the result. If I left only 3 baby fruit to mature, would I get pumpkin size fruit? There must be limit to how large they can get.

The hard frosts we had in October seem to have made them sweeter. This one sure was sweet, juicy, and nice and crunchy. November isn’t bad when you can pick sweet fruit like this.

Yesterday when I saw the foothills white with the first snow of the season, I knew we were in for a chilly night. And before going to bed last night, I was pretty sure I’d wake up to a frosty morning when it was already down to 35ºF (2ºC).

This morning it was just under freezing. The first frost of the season dusted the roof of a dog house.

The frost dusted fallen maple leaves and edged blades of grass in white. And our little Buddha meditated on the wonder of this season’s first frost.

The St. John’s Wort is still blooming. I read that the plant gets that name because often blooms on the birthday of the biblical John the Baptist, June 24. Though, really, once it blooms, when is it not in bloom? How many people have birthday’s from June into November? Half the people in the world do. It should be called Half Everyone’s Wort.

Wort is an interesting word. It comes from the Old English wyrt, which refers to plants and herbs. Wyrt comes from the Proto-Germanic word wurtiz and even earlier to the Proto-Indo-European root *wṛ́tis, which means root or plant.

Fall is here and on a rainy day our dogs lie in the window and dream of summer gone. They are fair weather dogs. On rainy days when we open the door to let them out, they will run onto the landing of the steps and come running back in. If dogs could hibernate until spring arrives with its sunny days, these two would.

The dogs we had before, BB and Echo, were as comfortable lying out in the rain as in a warm, cozy house. Not Takuma and Ena. On a rainy day they’d rather dream of summer gone than go out and play in autumn rains.

The maple tree by the house is on fire. On sunny days its brilliant leaves burn bright red.

There are still a few things to bring in from the garden. These are about the last of the tomatoes. The basil is almost gone. The squash will be around for a while.

A hint for those with lawns and chickens, they love it if you don’t mow. The taller and thicker the grass, the more fun they have, scratching around in it, pecking through it, finding good things to eat.

And October is the season here for ripe Asian pears. This year’s crop are large, though not as sweet as last year’s. Maybe another week or two of ripening will make them sweeter.

And on to fall and winter we go. Summer was long and much warmer than usual. Not only here but around the world. The eery warmth continues into October. Just two days ago it was 60ºF (15ºC) in the morning. In a normal October day most days aren’t even that warm. After such a warm summer world wide, there is a sense of foreboding of what this winter will be.

The mornings feel more like fall than summer. Soon the nights will be longer than the days. Time to enjoy the last fruiting plants of summer.

Strawberries at the end of summer are this year’s surprise. Strawberries I planted last year over wintered and grew like weeds this year. Every year some unexpected plant brings joy.

I’ve noticed a spider web growing next to the gate. And this afternoon on my way out, I saw a spider waiting on the web. Possibly the spider weaving the web. But as I took pictures of it I noticed another spider inside the funnel.

So what is going on here? Two spiders sharing the same funnel web? A spider come a courting? Or a spider hunting another spider? I did not stick around to find out. Some mysteries are best unsolved.

Lately I’ve thought of starting an “Only Murders on the Farm” podcast. I have enough material to make it a weekly thing. I’ll stumble on a crime scene on a path, some carcass ripped apart to the point of non recognition. “What happened here?” I’ll wonder.

The only thing is, a podcast like that should be a murder mystery that needs solving. With a detailed step by step process of how I solved the mystery. And that is where the whole point of a “Only Murders on the Farm” podcast falls apart. Because there is no mystery as to who the perpetrators of these grizzly murders on the farm are.

The idea of the podcast popped up when visiting teenage girls discovered a dead bobcat in the dog kennel several weeks ago. That was a shocker.

The dogs have dispatched rodents, possums, raccoons, and countless rabbits. Watching these dogs bring down a fighting raccoon in the middle of the night is as traumatic as watching hyenas and lions fight to the death at night on the Serengeti. Not something for the faint of heart, trust me. And I’ve seen them eat a freshly killed rabbit at the same time. Taku starting from the head. Ena from the rear. I didn’t stick around to see what happened when their snouts met in the middle.

But I never expected them to bring down a bobcat! So I need to post signs on the fencing, signs that creatures roaming around at night can read. Signs that say, “Death awaits all who climb over this fence!”

It is hard to reconcile that these two lovely dogs who like to cuddle on our bed, lick our faces, and beg for food, have murder on their minds 24/7. I have a suspicion that they dream in their sleep of bringing down an elephant. That would make their life complete.

So any traveling circuses which happen to pass through Bow, make sure your elephants stay in their trucks until they are a safe distance away. Or teach the elephants to read and heed the warning signs I will eventually put on our fencing.