Indian Summer

 One of my favourite poems, which I memorized in elementary school in the 1950s is William Wilfred Campbell's Indian Summer. The last warm days in October before winter begins to set in.

Indian Summer

Along the line of smoky hills

The crimson forest stands,

And all the day the blue-jay calls

Throughout the autumn lands.

Now by the brook the maple leans

With all his glory spread,

And all the sumachs on the hills

Have turned their green to red.

Now by great marshes wrapt in mist,

Or past some river's mouth,

Throughout the long, still autumn day

Wild birds are flying south.

We are enjoying Indian Summer (Бабье лето Baba Leto in Russian) here in Zhovti Vody. We had a few days of 10C weather and one night of frost but now it is 20C in the daytime and 10C at night. The cats don't even come home at night. 

Tanya has gone to Kyiv for three days to visit Masha as her roomies have gone to Turkey on holiday. It is a risk as Covid is running wild in Ukraine. Two days ago people were lined up here for vaccinations as Pfizer was finally readily available. Waiting for Pfizer may have been a mistake as we have 40 new cases per day and lost 8 people in the past two weeks.

Yard work is pretty much done. Tanya has continually clipped and dug in her flowers. We cleaned off the last of the garden, hauled the dead plants to our compost pile in the abandoned garden next to us, and spread well rotted manure over some of the garden. We will hire our neighbour to rototill it next week. He has a big front wheel drive garden tractor.

Our walnut trees yielded well again. We cannot give them away and have a tub left from last year, a big wire basket and large cardboard box from this year and left lots on the ground. We raked the leaves into a long row one day and burned them the next. Of course we had a very strong wind on the third day and the rest of the leaves fell so I will rake them before Tanya gets home. She will do the burning.

Lucky and I will go for a walk today. It is too nice to be inside.

Fall colours on our street

Walnut leaves

The long view of the walnut leaves

Burning leaves. NW wind blew the smoke towards the pig fam 1 km away.
Tanya said it was their turn

We cleaned the driveway. The white sand is to refill Lucky's sandbox.
He love to dig in it and hide his toys, then 'find' them.

Yours truly in my 20 year old South African Stockman's hat.
A gift from my friend Wayne at www.barakasheabutter.com 

Half of this year's crop of walnuts

Our neighbour trimmed low branches off the walnut trees.