Slowly freezing up...

This may be the latest start to winter I can recall, but it's okay. I'm just glad the mud has frozen up and we can walk about in relative freedom.

As many of you may recall, 18th Oct was the No Kings protest, but Raven and I have agility class Sat afternoons, so she came with me and DL came in a separate car. I don't believe she had ever experienced a crowd before. She did great! Except it's hard to take a photo with her because she keeps giving kisses!

But she was fairly calm and accepted lots of petting.

Fairbanks' count came in at 2500 caring souls. Unlike in bigger cities, our crowd was long and narrow, stretching a bit over half a mile and about 10 people deep. I know that's not a lot, but Fairbanks is a small town. The electrical workers' union, IBEW, opened their building for use for the day, and handed out bowls of soup. They also put up posters with QR codes that sent people to the donation website for the Western Alaska disaster relief fund to help communities impacted by recent flooding from ex-Typhoon Halong. Over $2,500 in cash donations were raised.

We saw more dogs this time, too, as well as horses! Raven was in good company.

She did particularly well in agility that day! I guess she was too tired to explode into bouts of Silliness as she sometimes does. Afterwards, we go to the dog park and she gets to chase her ball. I got her this funny eccentric ball that bounces off in unpredictable directions. She loves it! I just hope I'm not undoing her training in the Physics of Projectile Motion.

So this is what it takes to tire her out... A 5-mile morning walk with Cricket, then an hour at a protest, then an hour of agility class, then half an hour of fetch, then a Second Walk with Cricket. And finally she's out!

But she pops back up for BROCKYSTEMZZZZ!!!

Everybody loves BROCKYSTEMZZZZ!!!!!

It's dark now in the mornings. I dug out our blinky LED vests.

And my headlamp.

On my birthday (!!!) The Inu-Yupiaq Dance Group had a frybread fundraiser. You may know that the concept of frybread as Indigenous food is a complicated one. It's not truly indigenous food; it's colonizer food, made from rations given to people who were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and thus their traditional food sources. On the other hand, some people celebrate it as a food of resilience! Making something tasty to get through hard times. But then on the third hand, this whole history of frybread displacing Native foods didn't happen in Alaska; Alaska Natives adopted frybread from their Lower 48 brethren! I guess where my opinion falls is that if it's being sold by groups fundraising for indigenous celebration and well-being, I happily buy it and don't dig too deep in my brain. The more topical problem is not the weight of history but that eating basically a giant donut for lunch is not the healthiest choice. But it's a sometimes food, not a daily food! :)

After eating my truly astounding frybread taco, I sat in my office like one of those giant snakes that swallows an impala or a gnu and then takes a month to digest. But it was my birthday and I had already planned to take the afternoon off! So I heaved myself out of my office chair and waddled to the post office, where the perfect antidote to frybread was waiting:

Then I waddled down to my car and went home and harnessed up the girls. I told them we should go check out the lower trails for the first time this season! I knew Rosie Creek wouldn't be frozen, but we could at least go down and look at it, then U-turn, pop back up onto the road, and do a neighborhood walk from there. My plan was a fine one, but not well-executed. The girls were CRAZY EXCITED to be on the trails!

Uh-oh... that overflow ice looks thin..

And then I punched through! Up to my knees! Ayah! I did an extremely undignified scramble to get back onto frozen dirt (with, please note, a partially digested impala still weighing my stomach down). Now the bottoms of my pants, as well as my shoes and socks, were soaking wet. I went home and rinsed off, then changed to dry pants-socks-shoes, then we headed out for our road walk, a bit later than planned. Good thing dogs are eminently flexible with regards to time!

Our winter vegetable share from Offbeat Farm came with some nice roasting veggies, but we got this one mega-turnip I only used less than half of.

I cut that half into halves and diced one quarter to blend in with our mashed potatoes, but then I just thought "that is too much turnip for one meal!" so I put it into a quart jar and then into the fridge for another day:

And there is still a quarter of it left! Have you ever seen such a thing?

Wait a minute... let me dig through my emails... I do recall that our local soup kitchen, the Bread Line got a donation of this!! You never know what will turnip in an Alaskan garden!

On Halloween. I carved a Raven and a Cricket!

BOLL IZ LYFE

Cricket loves her daddy.

Awwwwww. Happy winter to all 14 of my loyal readers!

And we blink and Fall is done

Fall is when the highbush cranberries start to smell like sweaty gym socks. A lot of people love that smell because they associate it with beautiful fall weather, but let us be honest, it's not altogether pleasant.

I like the fog that comes in fall. In our hilly area, it sits in discrete pockets in low areas, while the sky above is clear. It's a very beautiful effect. Here we walk through it.

I get a lot of photos of dog butts.

I love our neighborhood forest!

And we are eating GIANT ZOOKEENEEZZZ!!!

Mmmmm ZOOKEENEEZZZ!!!

It is time to put away shorts and T-shirts and get out some warm sweaters! In our tiny place, this is a non-trivial chore. I decide to do this while listening in on a webinar on "The Science of German Shepherds", part of a "Canine Brains" study out of Harvard. Raven is like, German Shepherds? I wanna watch!

"That is what my brain looks like??"

"Oh my hekkin' hek!"

My sous-chefs are excited about Fall foods.

Things that can all be roasted at once, and they get to sample all of the veggiebuhlz!

My commute highway was down to one lane for a few days there while they fixed potholes. While I waited for a pilot car, I snapped the pretty trees.

This is Miss Ruby.

She was two weeks old when she was dumped at the shelter with severe medical needs. She was brought immediately to a local vet, where Sirius had a mama dog Danu about to give birth. Ruby had emergency surgery and went home to Sirius to be fostered by Danu, who took excellent care of her along with her own newborn pups. The photos of big ol' 2-week old Ruby next to the tiny newborn Siberians are some of my favorites of all time.

Then Mary took Ruby home to finish her babyhood and be schooled in the Ways of Dog by Uncle Pico and Aunty Ersta.

When Pico and Ersta proclaimed Ruby ready to start her adult life, she was adopted by Jodi, where she will happily spend the rest of her days.

She is now three and Jodi says she is the happiest dog she has ever known and Jodi has known a *lot* of dogs. Ruby is nothing like a lot of other dogs who have suffered severe abuse: no shyness, no aggression, no reactivity. She is sweet and cuddly and loveslovesloves attention. She is kinda funny-looking but who cares? We are all kinda funny-looking in our own ways. She has a heart full of love and gives so much joy.

The powerline trail is beautiful at this time of year, too!

And so is Creamer's Field.

But all falls must come to an end, and rather abruptly! Earlier this week we got our first snow!

And it will be a while yet until the ground freezes and the snow sticks.

For now it's just turning into mud.

But we have snuggles!