Two weeks into Fall, which means we've entered October.
The weather is still hanging in there with temps mostly in the mid to high seventies although the nights have been downright nippy with early mornings in the low 40s!

I love these cool morning walks, they definitely have put an extra spring in my step!
It's funny how most people think of winter as a time to hibernate whereas for me it's the summer I try to 'sleep/make it through' and to re-emerge in Fall when I start to breath and live again!

                                        

It only has rained two times in the last 2 weeks during which we had about half an inch of water.
It sure was refreshing though, you could almost hear nature sighing of relief!

             

                                                                                        
                                                  

Although the pond next to us has almost no water in it left it is quite popular lately among waterfowl.
These 3 couples of Mallards are here almost every day for a while and sometimes stay overnight as well.

  

The morning after one of the rains I came across this Newt at the edge of the pond:
                                                                                                           

    

Newts can breath in water as well as on land and especially when it rains they tend to come ashore to hunt for insects not found in water.
We saw loads of them in the Spring but I hadn't seen any lately so I'm glad to see they're still around! Well, at least one ...

The fall-vegetables I tried to re-sow a couple of weeks ago all came up .. and all died after barely a week or so of minimal growth.
After doing absolutely nothing all summer my squash put out some (mostly male)flowers, but also 2 female ones that seem to be growing tiny squashes if you look real close:

It's a miracle! Better late than never I guess .. although I doubt that they will grow into something edible.

The one Clematis I have, which produced a couple of beautiful flowers in June, is giving me two more. In October!

                                            

 
And fortunately the blueberries are adding some (fall) color to the otherwise empty raised beds ..

    


This is a Mountain Ash which lives just behind the red barn:

We're lucky to be able to see it's pretty yellow fall-colors since it's owners, our landlords, actually can't since the barn is in the way.

I was thrilled to see this Kingfisher one morning, sitting on the electric wire alongside our road:

 

He was in company of a Blue Jay and funny enough they appeared to be sort of friendly.
They sat amiably fairly close to each other (without bickering) and when the Kingfisher moved a little further down the wire, his 'friend' followed.                 

So cute!   

 

Nothing much else happened this week that I can think of.
Work has been slow all of September but this Friday James got a big estate appraisal which will be divided in 5 separate ones and later that day he got 4 more!
When it rains it pours .. literary!
(Funny enough, when I checked last years work situation, exactly the same thing happened at the beginning of October!)

I finished my first Fall puzzle:

                   
So much easier than those deer of the previous one!

And when I went grocery shopping this week I couldn't resist getting a few fall-related items:

We already had those Pumpkin Spice Rolls with coffee and they were good, not exceptional, but OK.

                  

   Smothered in pumpkin spice icing. We tried not to think of the calories!