Some of the trees have started turning yellow. That’s a hint, along with the brilliant orange hawthorn berries. The robins are hanging around, watching the hawthorn tree. Then they’ll strip it clean – while ignoring equally ripe trees in other yards. I have no idea why.
It’s now in the mid to lower 50s in the mornings, although afternoons can still poke into the 90s. I actually needed a jacket the other morning. We’ve gone over a week without running the air conditioner at RedQuarters.
At least two dozen buzzards were circling as I headed to work on Tuesday. They all headed south. They over-summer here in one of the old, very high-rent districts, much to the chagrin of the home owners. Apparently having a vulture rookery in your yard does not improve property values, or help neighborhood morale.
Sign on a local café: “I had my patience tested the other day. It came back negative.” I know that feeling.
Sign on a local church: “Remember the black-eyed peas we ate for luck at New Years? When are those supposed to kick in?” AMEN!
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
*can vouch for vultures not being the best neighbors*
Did anyone ask for GOOD luck with the beans? That may be our problem.
c4c
According to the Chinese zodiac, this was supposed to be a year of fair-to-average luck for me.
…That zodiac needs to be shot.
Next is year of ox. I *really* hope is better!
(After this one, a dull, slow, plodding thing would seen as quite good… or at least not too bad.)
“Rats!” sums things up too much this year.
Dull would be great. Dull would be awesome.
(As long as it’s living, not the writing.)
*Words* can be exciting. Written ones. Spoken ones should not be too exciting.
It’s to be a nasty winter.
Flocks of southbound geese were darkening the skies the first week of August, and I haven’t seen any in weeks.
The trees have already dropped nearly a quarter of their leaves, but have only just barely started to turn color.
The squirrels and rabbits haven’t disappeared yet, but they’re a whole lot less present.
And we haven’t had a low get within 20 degrees of frost. Heck, the $_&+-ing cicadas are still screaming at night
.
It ain’t right.
The cicadas are fading, but the [rude adjective] crickets were going strong this AM.
I saw four large Vees of geese flying west all more-or-less together (downriver) yesterday. Each Vee had over 25 birds, so it was a noisy, feathered overcast. (Checks season dates) Not currently in a waterfowl season, so there’s no other noises when the birds flew past.
We’re still solidly in Fire season (the other three are Almost Winter, Winter, and Still Winter), but we had a tiny amount of rain this morning. Enough to moisten the deck and show on the walkways, but not enough to show on the dirt. Being high country, we’ve had a few hard freezes already (26F counts as a hard freeze in my book). Time to clear out space in the barn/shop so the fire trailer can be stored with water.
A lot of birds flew south early this year because of the smoke darkening the sky. But yeah, we’ve only got one sunspot and that can’t be good.
You’re supposed to eat Hoppin’ John, not just plain black-eyed peas… sigh…
I saw a couple of solid-colored woolly bear caterpillars this morning. In the East, folklore predicts winter severity as the inverse of the color bands. No or one band is a bad sign. I’ll recheck and hope for better, later on.
I had some good luck a week ago. A routine maintenance session for my car discovered that the rear brake pads were worn to the nub. A couple more weeks on those pads and I might have gotten into the rotors, and warped one or both. New pads = $. New rotors = $$$$. When you don’t have a job, paying $ instead of $$$$ is VERY good luck.
Of course, I’d prefer to divert that luck to either the job hunt or the lottery. But it’s 2020. I’ll take what I can get.
This is the year to appreciate small favors of fortune.