A gentle glide into fall

Last Saturday, the weather seemed mild. Dry-ish after months of rain. Then all of a sudden, a sudden rainstorm kicked up, with giant raindrops seeming to fall out of the sunshine!

Then the rain thickened up, the sun disappeared, and the rain and wind looked violent!

It poured over the next hour, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. Late that night, when I stepped outside, I saw that dark skies had come at last, and millions of stars appeared to have been spilled across them. Millions and millions, and the Milky Way!

Photo by the eminently skilled and enormously patient Mariska Wright

The next day was so brilliant blue, clear, crisp, and mosquito-free, that we scrapped plans to cut weeds (and by that I mean, the plans for DL to cut weeds while I supervised from the porch) and went for an afternoon hike instead. By the end of the day, each fuzzy thing had had a tailored walk schedule!
2 miles for Autumn
6 miles for Linden
10 miles for DL
12 miles for Starbuck

Our first walk was a 2-miler for Autumn. That's as far as she can go nowadays. For our second walk, we left her behind and headed to our neighborhood trail:


There was lots of standing water, per usual for this summer:


Booger!


Starbuckeroo!


So much water.


DL and Roo walkin' through the woods:


Then Booger was ready to rest, so we left her behind with Autumn, and DL, Starbuck, and I headed to Murphy Dome. What a beautiful day it was!