A few days of rain last week.  Doesn't do a lot for my motivation!
But it seems to do a lot for the mosquito population.

They are making it very difficult to spend much time at once in the yard.  Even using DEET they are still a problem.  They must know their time is limited...they will seek out any tiny little piece of skin not covered with deet.  Rather disgusting!  And then I ran out of bug spray. Hopefully I can get some tomorrow as there is so much to be done yet outside. 

We've been having some gorgeous weather the past few days, after all the rain.  But I wasn't able to spend a lot of time in the yard, what with things like fall festivals going on everywhere!  Actually I'm not one for going to things like that, but my niece was having a booth at one, in support of cystic fibrosis awareness and a cousin was having her first public performance of  the "She Serpents". They do belly dancing.  Awesome to watch.

The ducks are back in full numbers now.  Most mornings I see about 3 dozen.  No sign of the white duck yet, but her companion of last year has returned.

They are their feisty selves, picking on each other, leaving many duck feathers over the yard.  Though they usually aren't this aggressive with each other until it gets very cold. The groundhogs are losing out on feed since the ducks clean up every speck of cracked corn.  OK not all the groundhogs, since Little Dude is still making his porch visits and helping himself directly to the bag.  Surprisingly he doesn't seem to consume a lot given his size.  He likes a varied diet and will still work hard to get the lid off the other bin to get inside and eat the sunflower seeds.  Today he was in the corn bag and I startled him...I hadn't realized he was out there and I called to the squirrel (yea yea i talk to the animals) to see if he wanted a peanut, realizing too late that Little Dude was on the porch.   About 15 minutes later I was heading outside. I didn't see LD or hear him get back in the corn bag.  so I opened the door and suddenly the lid popped open on the sunflower seed bin that's right in front of the door and out a groundhog popped!  

Watching the activity outside makes me wonder if we are going to have an earlier start to winter.  The chipmunk has been closing up one of his burrow openings, and reopened another. I guess his coffers are getting filled.

The warm weather has encouraged some flowers to open up.  I can't remember what this is.  The name of the flower is in my brain, honestly, it just can't seem to find it's way to the tip of my tongue to spew forth!

Squirrels are so cute....even when they are little thieves!

I think I figured out why the one squirrel was crying and hiding under it's tail. It's being bullied by another squirrel.  There's been a lot of chasing and some fairly rough tumbling in the yard.  One of them now has a torn ear. Yep, I yelled at them, scolding them like naughty children.  One squirrel took off, the torn ear, came closer...and was rewarded with a peanut of course.

Suddenly there is a third squirrel, and things actually seem a little more calm.

I'll have to continue later!  I have a caterpillar I'm trying to identify, as well as some sort of flying ant.