There is a tree here that the locals call "choke cherries". It is a smallish, bushy tree that produces small, 1/4"D berries, very sour with a pit in the middle. My mother used to make jelly from them.
Every year, when the berries are fully ripe and there are a LOT of them, the birds come to eat them. Not a few birds at a time over a few days, but a big flock of them all at once, en mass, and they have those berries picked off in a very short time. The past week or so I have kept an eye out for the birds. Where are you? Is something wrong? This morning, bright and early, there they are! If they didn't come, I would be a little concerned.
The squirrels have been frantically collecting and stashing the Spruce pine cones. It is interesting that they stash them at the base of the tree or very near it, within a few feet. Maybe to make them easier to find under the winter snows? Thousands of them. These are old, very tall trees and the majority of the cones are near the top. Those squirrels scamper up there, from branch to branch and from tree to tree, and drop them to the ground. Then they gather them up, one at a time, and take them to the stash. I have never seen so many stashes.
I see the leaves on a small tree are turning red. I can smell autumn in the air. The water level in the creek is slowly going down. By winter, it will be a snow-covered trickle, mostly under ice.
I have spent the spring and summer working on this house and the surrounding property, much like the squirrels, rather frantically sometimes. Must be done before winter. Hurry hurry. Somehow, now I feel a slowing down, a sort of pre-hibernation perhaps? Or like some of the flora, getting towards the natural end? It's a comforting thought. The cycle continues.
