The clouds come in...

... warming the air and making the day visually bleak.







I can't wait until snow comes! I've already put my isothermal snow collection device* in the yard, taken out the extension cords for the car plugin, and taken the screen door off and put it away. And I'm going to wax my skis this weekend! Yay!

*Photos to come of this high-tech device. :)

Edited to add:
Here is an article about a 13-foot sunflower.

Notes from here and there

1. We have a snow forecast for tomorrow. Yay! I'm sure it will just be a sprinkling, but still...

2. Road not necessary for road rage. File under "incidents from the villages".

3. Here is an article you absolutely must read: Anchorage woman holds police at bay in armed standoff over cat. The article includes the memorable lines, "The woman refused for several hours to come out of the Centennial Village residence, resulting in a standoff with police. The standoff ended when the woman took some medication and fell asleep."

4. Finally, here is an article describing two of our candidates for borough assembly. This one's a real gem. Apparently, the Bennett brothers would like to eliminate property taxes to free us from serfdom. Understand, the State of Alaska has no income nor sales taxes. The only source of income for road maintenance, fire and ambulance services, schools, etc. is our property taxes. But the apostrophe-abusing Bennett brothers (signs all over town proclaim, "Bennett's For Borough") inform us:

Think about it, you buy a home and property, you get a 30 year mortgage on it and pay anywhere from $150 to $200,000 to the government besides your mortgage.WHY???

To rent your property. The government is claiming ownership on your property, you are the Serf, and the government is the lord, the landowner. Don’t think so? Don’t pay your “rent” and watch them take it from you.

This is Wrong! We, the Free people of the united States of America have the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property!

To pay homage to a state entity is to place yourself subservient to that entity. To pay a “tax” implies that we are not the rightful owners, only the lessor of the land.Our Founding Fathers would NEVER have backed such an institution. They saw Property Rights as the Foundation to an Individuals Freedom.

That's a direct copy/paste. The spacing, punctuation, and spelling are all theirs. I think I need to go lie down now.

And so it begins...

Last night we got our first light, light dusting of snow. The trails are *almost* frozen, although they still need to be covered in snow to be truly passable. Miss Millie B. Doofus, SuperAgent of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Supreme Ruler of the People's Independent Republic of Bunnistan, sez, "I am a fluffy, cuddly bunny."


The birch forest that we like to walk through is denuded, and the sun is cold and stark:





The girls are bouncy and happy and run around like greased lightning:


Parts of this hillside are cut from when the mining companies came to check whether mining there would be profitable:


A stand of quaking aspen that has yet to drop its leaves:

Another stand of quaking aspen made the local paper for being the first to turn in the fall.

Edited to add this bit of hilarious irrelevance. I had to take a screenshot of this targeted advertising fail. Why in heck is this product being advertised to me?

I couldn't think of a worse match if I tried!

Two problems can make a solution!

Woman fends off attacking bear with giant zucchini.

More like the poor bear was afraid the woman was trying to give him excess zucchini! He obviously didn't have his "no zukes" pin on.

Here are my three fuzzies relaxing:

Happy Equinox!

The equinox is at 7:09 tonight local time. After that, you lower 48 folks will beat us for daylight until spring.


I don't know why we don't have closer to exactly 12 hours of daylight, but there you have it.

It is also a full moon; how cool is that?

And, according to spaceweather.com, the sun is back up to its regular shenanigans. Yay!

A bit more to report today

1) The PFD amount was announced today to be $1281, about the same as last year's at $1305.

2) We had our first night below freezing last night, and we are not expected to have any more nights that remain above freezing for this year.

Photos from Denali

I won the Road Lottery and got to drive into Denali with friends!

Denali seemed to have been getting hard frosts for at least a week or so. Check out the hoar frost at 10 a.m.!


It was beautiful, clear, sunny, perfect:


The group looking mostly unimpressed. :)


The next day, we went to Denali State Park, where the dawgs could run free:


Nice view:


The glacier coming down:


Autumn waiting for me on the trail:


Another group shot:


My dawgs:


Sam:


We cuddle:


The hillside:


A sunwashed lunch:


Heading back down:

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

-- Jane Kenyon













By the way, guess who ran off again this morning and didn't come back for an hour? Guess who's getting a shock collar? Oh, that's right! The dogs who, paradoxically, won't let me go to the outhouse unattended, who move two feet to the North if I move two feet to the North, who attend me back and forth to unload groceries, who stare at me with slavish, adoring eyes while I sit on the couch reading. Oh yes, those super-devoted dogs! Them's the ones! All of a sudden, approximately every couple of months, with no warning. ZIP! They're gone and don't come back for up to several hours!

Well, no more of this! Shock collars for them!

Aaaannnd... we're back!

Said the sky to the earth.

My commute nowadays

And here we have Maija reporting on mox and cranberries at her family's fish camp in Sisualik.

Uncle! Uncle!

My final pickup from Rosie Creek Farm:


Holy cabbage, batman!


Mercy! I surrender!

The road to/from the farm:




I lived along that road a few years ago. Autumn and I have put many miles running up and down it. It's so lovely!

Quantity over quality

That's the aurora we got last night. Huge, plain green ribbons that danced very little, but filled the sky and lasted for about an hour.





Here is a much lovelier photo snapped from Talkeetna.

Breaking news!

Suspected moosenapper is also a common thief!

Also: Migrating bees!

And walri!

Fall falls 'round the 'hood

I can't be certain, but I do believe today was the most beautiful day I've ever seen. And I live in the most beautiful neighborhood around Fairbanks.

This is my street. Heck, yeah:


On our walk this morning:






The dictionary's definition of the color blue is "the pure color of a clear sky". Is that not poetic?


I picked some dandelion greens for Millie:

Fall falls on Murphy Dome

Today we had a perfectly stunning, unbelievably beautiful fall day. M and I decided to go for a hike on Murphy Dome.







This is the area that burned in a fire last summer (2009):


The valley as seen from Murphy Dome:


Goober dawgs!


Resting during lunch time:


Ponds and flats to the North. We are well into moose hunting season, and hunters were heading there to seek meese.


At some point, we absorbed another dog into our pack. We asked passers-by if they were missing a dog, or if they knew anyone who was. We found no clue as to his owners, so we took him with us.


See how nicely he fits in with my crew? We took him to the animal shelter, and they scanned him and found a microchip! Yay! He'll be reunited with his family!


M picking cranberries:


M lives in a Quaker community. When I went to drop her off, I took some photos of their garden. Is any vegetable prettier than purple cauliflower?




M's outhouse overlooks a beautiful wooded hill behind the property. It's very picturesque, sitting in there! The downside to lacking a door, however, is that skwerls steal their toilet paper. Here is their solution:


Beautiful birch in their driveway: