Winter is coming!

Tucker:  The Human Assistant said it was cold Sunday. I didn't think so. But he said there were 6 heating degree days all on that one day. (I don't know what that means!) He also said the average temperature was only 59° F. Actually, first he said something about the integral of temperature deficit as a function of blah blah blah.

Who listens to humans? He also said winter comes after we harvest the crops.  WE?


Here I am under the apple tree. You can click on the pictures to see them bigger. The H.A. says there were no apples last year. Lots and lots of pretty blossoms but no apples. I don't know. I got here later in the year. He also says he thinks they're smaller this year than before. And more of them are falling off the tree. But that's okay by us dogs. While we harvest them.

One day puppy stood up and picked an apple off the tree. H.A. says limbs shouldn't hang down that low. The tree needs to be pruned. He said that means that dried plums have to be smeared on it.

We have a plum tree. But the plums are too small and yucky to eat. They're just for looking at. And maybe for birds to eat, I don't know. But I know he's not drying any of them out and smearing them on the apple tree. Maybe he was pulling on my leg, which I don't like.


We also have grapes. H.A. says the vines are like Very. Slow. Kudzu. They climbed over the raspberry branches. Up the telephone pole's leash. He says we'll have to hack them down a few feet. But they're already too tall for him to reach.

Click on the right picture and look closely. We have a small crop of puppytail. I hope that doesn't come back next year!

These sunflowers are by the house. I don't know why they're not as tall as the ones down by the grapes. The human says when he lived here 40 years ago there weren't any sunflowers here. But his mom bought birdseed at the store and there were sunflower seeds in it.

She would set it out in pie pans on the patio. Which is just flat stones set in the ground. He says the sunflowers had taken over the patio when he came back four years ago. But they weren't all over the yard like this summer.

Sunflowers are escape artists. They jumped the fence and are in the side yards next to the house now. Maybe next year the whole back yard and side yards will be sunflowers! Except under the apple tree, of course.

Bees love the sunflowers. They had quit work for the day when H.A. took these pictures. Jaeger would snap at flies. Good thing he didn't snap at bees!

The sunflowers are starting to be done now. The bees are almost done harvesting. Most of the apples are out of the tree. I guess the birds ate all the plums. The crops are almost harvested. Winter should be here soon!