October in Photos

We drove a few miles up the road from our farm last Sunday and found these colorful maples. We also found rocks to protect the new trees in the arboretum. Here is the Japanese Umbrella Pine, safe from my lawnmower and, hopefully, safe from gophers.

This Seven Sons Plant, which is really a tree, no longer needs protection and is blooming now, in mid-October.

The Smoke Bushes are all ablaze in various shades of red.

But the brightest tree of all in the arboretum is Mom's Dollar Tree, so named because she bought the original, from which this is a seedling, for one dollar on sale. It turned into a lovely tree that is covered with white blooms in the spring and turns a fiery red in the fall.

 After planting the trees yesterday that I bought recently in end-of-season sales, and circling them with protective rocks,  I hiked through our property to retrieve cards from the trail cameras and see what's been visiting. Although the alders don't put on an extravagant show, I like their soft yellows behind our pump house by the creek. And they provide a nice backdrop for black Nightingale.

This Red-breasted Sapsucker diligently explored for insects as I admired him on my way past. All around him Steller's and Scrub Jays were carrying acorns to store for winter. The oak trees are heavy laden this year.

Back by the house, colors are pretty, too. October is a colorful month.

After uploading the videos off the trail cameras, I was glad to see Split Ear and her fawn are still alive and well. The fawn has grown a lot since we first saw it in the trail camera back in May.

Here they are when the fawn was new.

Of course, we are seeing many raccoons in our trail cameras. They are very plump with all the fruit everywhere this bountiful year. These were eating apples and pears on Oct. 5 (and probably every other night, too.)

This coyote in its thick autumn coat was caught by one of our cameras on October 2nd.

The young buck we've been watching grow antlers appeared in the camera on Oct.8. He is probably the culprit who destroyed one of my beautiful Alaska Yellow Cedar trees by rubbing the velvet off his antlers. I am not so fond of this buck anymore.

Although the bears have been keeping their distance from our house this year, we've seen sign up the driveway and down in the woods. One visited the pear and apple zone on the far side of our property and got his photo taken in our camera. The apple and pear crops are so heavy everywhere that the bear and deer and raccoons and coyotes cannot keep up with the bounty, as you can see in this photo. 

It's a fall of seemingly endless harvest. We are still picking tomatoes and corn daily. All of us on this farm, wild and otherwise, will go into winter fat and happy.