We're in for our first fall cold snap with a freeze warning tonight.  Today was quite breezy toppling over some of the larger potted plants.  Downtown Murphy hit 57 in the sun so we were probably 54.  Cliff fired up the stove and split more wood.  I moved the wicker chair and cushions from the porch to my sewing room leaving space for the winter wood pile.  Porch plants are scattered in all the rooms including a few geraniums out in my sewing room.  Being the first winter in the sewing room, not sure how they will fare. 
The wooly caterpillar, with its thirteen distinct segments of black and brown, have been a predictor of winter weather for decades.  I spotted one with brown sandwiched between black front and back.  We heard that a local spotted one that was all black indicating a cold snowy winter.  If squirrel behavior is a barometer of this coming winter, we're in trouble. 

As part of my fall decoration, I placed a large straw bale topped with a pumpkin and a potted purple and yellow mum at the fence post.  A few days later from the kitchen window I noticed a gathering of squirrels on the post, on the rails, and sitting on the bale.  They seemed to be shoveling straw into their jowls.  Another time I observed a squirrel with its head burrowed in the bale as if it were rooting for mushrooms.  This happened day after day until finally the plant and the pumpkin landed on the ground.  This is the bale today.  I thought the squirrels were eating the straw but then wondered if they were filling their cheeks transporting the straw to their nests to insulate against an impending cold winter.  Acorns are scarce this year so they have been climbing up tree trunks and thrusting their bodies onto the squirrel-proof feeder shaking the seeds to the ground.

  I know I've got to be smarter than a squirrel.  My latest attempt to stop the shaking feeder is to fasten aluminum turkey pans to tree trunks at the level of thrust.  I also wrapped heavy duty aluminum foil around trunks.  The squirrels don't like the foil feeling on their little feet.  I know this is temporary.  While I'm at the gym working out, they're gathered around the drawing table working a new strategy. 

turkey pan tree

We are the only residences with tin foil and turkey pan tree trunks.

Cliff trailered his Harley down to Biketoberfest in Florida last week.  I stayed in Murphy.  This was his great adventure.  I washed and waxed our wood floors, straightened up closets, threw things away, read mysteries, and drank wine and played my dulcimer.

He had good riding weather, no rain, but very hot and humid.  He visited the diner where we used to ride our motorcycles to on the weekends, went to Sopotnick's Cabbage Patch and a few other nostalgic places.  He enjoyed his time and his riding.