Fall Is For The Birds

The autumn equinox was Monday, and it came with little fanfare around here.  I've not had a fire since before my vacation, and I went downhill after getting home from work that day.  My wife had been sick over the weekend, a stomach bug with mostly extreme exhaustion as the symptom, and I was getting it.  I spent the next two days at home, mostly in bed.  Today was my second day back to work and while still tired I've got a few good meals in me again so feeling much better, thank you, but cold and flu season is coming.

I caught the birds above in a spur-of -the-moment video just a bit ago.  Though only one sunflower survived there it got big and made the birds very happy for the cover and extra seeds.  And the cats spend lots of time sitting there watching (and chirping at) them.  

I took the pics below yesterday afternoon.  I've not done much in the yard the last few weeks, and the flora is certainly losing its luster.  Many of the sunflowers are half brown, but their last little buds are still blooming.  I'll do some mowing and cleanup tomorrow, but it's still too early to pull and compost most everything.  The ten-day forecast shows beautiful weather for us for this time of year, probably our last taste of summer temperatures, and I hope to enjoy it fully.

New Mums for fall, on the steps.  Plenty of time for those blooms yet.

If I find good seeds available on the sunflowers I will save them, otherwise I still have enough from my big sunflower two years ago to plant more next spring.  At that time I will make myself more prepared to harvest the seeds from the first, biggest, and strongest blooms for the future.  Right now, the heads get poached before the seeds are even ready to harvest, by birds and small critters that climb the plants  to get after their bounty.

I'm very tired tonight, but maybe after some cleanup of the yard tomorrow I may try to have a fire while watching the Brewer game.  Then later tomorrow night I have another live-stream concert I want to watch.  I love a good concert better than a movie any day, always have.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

*Well, I guess you can't upload a short video just to Blogger anymore.  If I get a better, longer video I may upload to ToYoube, which seems to be the only way to put a video here now.  I'm too beat to do anything else right now, sorry.