Good morning to everyone even if it isn’t morning where you live!  Actually, I like to say good morning no matter what time of day it is.  Why?  Because I enjoy mornings.  To me it’s the best time of day.  It marks a new beginning.  A new start.  New energy to tackle whatever the day brings.  New strength to fight any lingering problems.  A new freshness in my brain for solving any difficulties that come along.  Morning brings new sunshine into my life.  Or perhaps new rain which is also necessary at times.  Morning brings a new perspective to every situation in life.  Other times of the day are good too.  But it’s morning that really gives us what we need to deal with the rest of the day.  Just my thoughts.

As you know I started to feed birds again now that fall has arrived.  But because of these pantry moths I can’t keep the bird seed inside.  So I put it in a tote outside.  Because the bears are not around yet the only problem would be raccoons.  So I used a tote with a special type of snap on lid.  That should be safe.  The first night it took that raccoon about 10 seconds to get the lid off.  He seemed to know exactly what needed to be done.  Okay, so I put another tote on top of that one and put a bunch of insulators inside.  That made the top tote heavy.  And the raccoon is small.  Second night, the raccoon shows up, looks around, sniffs, then stands on his hind legs and pushes the top tote off and got at the seeds.  Sigh.

So now I bring the seeds in at night only.  But I’m going to have to stop that too since these moths can chew their way through plastic bags.  Sigh.  Anyway, the raccoon had spilled some seeds in the tote.  Fine.  If he wants to feast on those, go ahead.  Third night. That crazy raccoon was making so much noise I couldn’t sleep.  So I quickly opened the door and went out to chase that critter away.  I also closed the door behind me because I didn’t want Muffin coming out to ‘play’ with the raccoon.

 I stopped.  And stared.  No raccoon.  It was a bear this time.  Me outside on that narrow deck with a bear.  And a closed door.  Not sure which of us was more startled by this.  But the bear grabbed a plastic bag full of insulators and took off past me and up the hill!  I couldn’t believe it.  That bear ran off with some of my insulators.  By the way, he was less than 2 feet from me at one point.  Now, when this first happened, I told my legs this was the time to remove me from this situation.  They did not.  They just kind of froze in position.  My legs and I need to have a good talk.  Sigh.

Speaking of walking.  It was a very nice fall day for a walk yesterday.  And it stayed sunny for nearly the whole time which was also very nice.  I managed to get some good pictures.  More mushroom pictures, including a tiny red ball mushroom.  Just a little red ball on top of a thin stem.  I have seen these before but not for a long time.  So that was nice to see again.  Also got some nice pictures of a young hawk.  At first I thought it was a young broad winged hawk.  But it looked too big.  And the color, especially the tail, didn’t look right.  But it’s call really gave it away.  Definitely not a broad winged hawk.  It was a red shouldered hawk.  Not one we see here too often, but they do show up occasionally.

That hawk was the most exciting find of the day, but coming in second was a flower called Indian-pipe.  These are fairly common around here, but they are an odd plant because they lack chlorophyll so they are pure white, leaves, flower, stem.  Normally.  But sometimes they are pink, like the ones I found yesterday.  At least, the flower part is pink.  I have never seen this color before, only the pure white ones.  So that was exciting for me too.

Well, guess I better stop for now.  But I will be back later with another award post.  I’m almost completely caught up with my awards now.  They are not coming in quite so fast anymore.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

© 2019 Steve McLeod.