Silly ducks with their backs turned and butts in the air – how are we supposed to know who they are?
At least these were a bit closer – can you name them?
Close, cooperative ducks, finally! What are they?

* Note: Don’t bother checking the photo tags, most of you won’t find any hints there. The only hint I will give is that these ducks are not what they seem to be. Have fun!

You are the season of retirement,
of full barns and harvested fields.
The cycle of growth has ceased,
and the busy work of giving life
is now completed.
I sense in you no regrets:
you’ve lived a full life.

I live in a society that is ever-restless,
always eager for more mountains to climb,
seeking happiness through more and more possessions.
As a child of my culture,
I am seldom truly at peace with what I have.
Teach me to take stock of what I have given and received;
may I know that it’s enough,
that my striving can cease
in the abundance of God’s grace.
May I know the contentment
that allows the totality of my energies
to come to full flower.
May I know that like you I am rich beyond measure.

As you, O Autumn, take pleasure in your great bounty,
let me also take delight
in the abundance of the simple things in life
which are the true source of joy.
With the golden glow of peaceful contentment
may I truly appreciate this autumn day.”

— Edward Hays

Autumn is my favorite season of the year – I love the colors and the cooler air, but I loathe the shortening days. The hours of daylight have been decreasing since the summer solstice, but the shortened twilight becomes most noticeable now. No more do I have an hour or so outside after my evening coffee when I get in from work. It’s darker when I get up too, which makes it next to impossible to rouse myself from bed. The cooler nights make wonderful sleeping weather with the windows wide open, and the crickets and katydids still sing me to sleep, albeit a bit slower now. The last few weeks I’ve been hearing the great horned owls and even a screech owl one night very late.

The farms I pass on my way to work are advertising u-pick pumpkins and apples. The weekend traffic heading west becomes unbearable on the local roads through the *country*, filled with people from away who come to pick apples and pumpkins. The summer beach crowds are gone, replaced with these same people to harvest peaches, then apples, then pumpkins. Before long it will be Christmas trees. I’m seeing deer again in the fallow fields and the young horses that I’ve watched grow up on the horse farms on the way to work are gone to begin their training for the racetrack, I suppose.

One of these weekends I need to get to Cape May and spend a little time at the hawk watch there. If no hawks are moving there is always the monarchs to see, or the huge numbers of flickers, or maybe a fallout of migrant robins. There is always some magic to be found at Cape May in the fall. What do you love about the coming season; what magic does it hold for you?

Toileting as a social activity

If you have a visitor counter on your blog, you might pay attention to the searches that bring people to your site. I’m not sure how useful this info is to us bloggers, but it can be an amusing look into what deep questions the internet-using public is pondering. Here, I get quite a few hits that relate to rabbits and more specifically to rabbit poop. I thought I’d share a list of these search terms for your amusement (and mine). I’m certain it’s this post from March that interests searchers.

bunny poops too much
is rabbit poop clean?
rabbit care smaller poop
how much rabbit poop in the veggie garden?
rabbit poop smaller
what does rabbit poop look like?
rabbit poop problems
photo of rabbit poop
rabbits poop a lot
bunnys poop
rabbit poops on couch
rabbit poop orange
rabbit poop health indicator

All the garden blogs I read seem to be featuring fall flowers the past few days, so I thought I’d buck the trend and post a summer flower while I still can. These morning glories are blooming on the fence around the pond and are putting on a pretty late-summer show. It’s called “Chocolate Silk” and has large flowers and variegated foliage. The only really *chocolate* part of the flower is the center, the rest is a softer rose-purple than is showing in these pics. We have it planted with some moonflowers and at the base of the fence we planted french marigolds. I thought the contrast of orange and purple would be pretty, but now that the morning glories are blooming well the marigolds are on their way out. We grew these from seeds which is a first for us.

Two of them – oh boy! What a joke. The six pepper plants kept dropping their blossoms – what is that about? Too much rain? These two nicely-sized peppers have been mocking me since Saturday when I picked them and tonight I’m going to make one of my favorites – stuffed peppers. My dad made the best stuffed peppers, but was always very vague about his recipe, like all good cooks are. I’ll share my recipe, but must warn you that I’m no cook.

2 large green peppers (how convenient; that’s all I’ve got)
3/4 lb. ground beef, pork, lamb, or sausage (I use lean ground beef)
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 7.5 ounce can tomatoes, cut up (fresh would be nice; I use a petit cut with Italian spices)
1/3 cup long grain rice
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (I’m generous with it – love the stuff!)
1/2 teaspoon dried basil or oregano (I use both)
1/2 cup shredded American cheese

Halve peppers lengthwise, removing stems, seeds and membranes. Immerse peppers in boiling water for 3 minutes. Sprinkle insides with salt. Invert on paper towels to drain well.

In a skillet cook meat and onion until meat is brown and onion is tender. Drain. Stir in undrained tomatoes, uncooked rice, Worcestershire, basil and oregano, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 15 to 18 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in 1/4 cup of the cheese. Fill peppers with meat mixture. Place in a baking dish and bake at 375 for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.

This same mixture can be used to fill zucchini or cabbage rolls. There is always just enough meat mixture left in the pan after filling the peppers that I can stand over the stove and eat hobo-style. I especially like this recipe because the peppers are just blanched and stay nice and crunchy. I always serve this with mashed potatoes and extra sauce on the side. Yum! Off to eat and enjoy.

“Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us”. – W.E.B. du Bois

Don’t you imagine it must be nice to keep a few chickens in your back yard? Crowing at dawn and to announce visitors? I know having chickens is no big deal for some of you living in more rural areas, but for most people living in my part of NJ, it’s something of a novelty nowadays. Growing up I didn’t know anyone who had chickens and I still don’t have any neighbors with a coop in the yard. The closest thing to outdoor farm animals in my area are hutch bunnies. ;-(

So when my oldest brother Kevin moved to the country (or what passes for *country* in these parts) and joked about it, we got him a baker’s dozen of baby chicks for Easter one year. I don’t think he’s forgiven me yet.

Giving animals as gifts is never a good idea. Giving chickens is really, really silly.

It’s been seven or eight years since that first batch of chickens and Kevin and his wife have recently built a fancy new coop to house their growing population, so I guess they must have found something to enjoy about them. There have been quite a few problems with predators though, as those of you with chickens know is inevitable. There have been raccoon issues and opossum problems, and of course there have been hawks who visit the flock.

Kevin sent me an email a few weeks ago with pics of this photogenic hawk, wanting to know what type it was. He had some great shots of it to help with ID, but this one was my favorite.

I’m not certain how many chickens have been lost through the years to hawk attacks, but from the stories he tells the problem is more often a raccoon or a neighbor’s dog. I was really surprised to hear that dogs would be a problem to chickens, but it happened. A few winters ago before my brother rebuilt the chicken coop he had hawks that were getting inside the coop to attack the chickens – imagine that! I guess late winter is a lean time for predators and they are desperate for food.

The original chickens we gave them were Bantams, who make little tiny eggs, but I’m not sure what variety he has now. He collects the eggs and lately has been using them to make a Pennsylvania Dutch Specialty – pickled beet eggs – yum! A recipe is available here. I love to visit when there are baby chicks, who will follow you around peeping. My brother lets them *forage* for bugs in his vegetable garden and feeds them raspberries from his bushes. He also turns over logs and rocks to help them find crickets to eat, but that’s another story! He used to have one really nasty little rooster that liked to attack people, so you had to carry a stick out in the garden, just in case he cornered you. I think they must be begging for breakfast in this last pic, just outside the back steps. Wouldn’t that be a nice sight first thing in the morning?

Has anyone noticed that the mid-week bunny fix has moved more towards the weekend? I originally started posting bunny pics on Wednesdays back in the spring because that is my teaching night. The bunny fix is an easy post that I can do quickly when I’m brain dead after working the day job and then teaching my class until 9 pm. Anyway, I’m teaching on Thursdays this semester so the bunny pics will be appearing on Thursdays until some time in December when the semester ends.

Back to Peeper, the bunny by the window. Our routine is for her to have a half hour or so of *out time* in the morning before I go to work. She chews on the door edges of her cage until I let her out. That sound drives me crazy so it’s an effective strategy on her part. Once I’m home in the evening and settled I let her out again to romp and play for a bit. We’re still at the stage where I feel the need to supervise her out time because she likes to get into things. She digs at the floor and the carpet. She pulls papers out of the wastebasket. She races around the room, literally bouncing off the walls. A few times I have come into the room to find her perched on my desktop. She jumps straight from the floor, up three feet, to the top of the desk. But her favorite thing to do is to sit on the hope chest and look out the window. None of the other bunnies have ever done that so it amuses me and I take a lot of pictures of her there.

I have pics and a story to share, but a lack of time and patience for Blogger’s wonkiness tonight.

Sensing this, Blogger vaporized my first attempt at this post. Now, more than an hour later, my laptop battery is about dead and I’m giving up for the night.

This is a pic of my niece feeding her chickens. The chickens are my fault.

Check back another time if the story interests you. There are hawk pictures.

‘Night.