Kevin informed me that it’s going to officially be fall at 2:20 this afternoon, in just over two hours from now, so this new fall website banner is ahead of schedule, something I do manage to achieve once every lifetime or so.

Meanwhile, back on September 2nd I took a boat ride by myself and had a delightful time.

Mom took this awesome photo of these two fawn right in front of her window.

I thought the clouds were particularly interesting on this day.

In my past post I mentioned this terrific book that Jim gave me, all about Lake Springfield, called “Lake Springfield in Illinois.” The caption on this photo talked about the opening of the zoo and the fact that Marlin Perkins from “wild Kingdom” was there, but didn’t identify any of the others. The guy to his right is Jim’s dad! His dad, Lawrence, was one of the founders of the zoo and Jim hadn’t known he was included in the book, but told me that he got in the paper quite a few times over the years. He said that Marlin Perkins was his dad’s friend. Pretty cool.

Spot helped Kevin with gardening. He’s always eager to follow us around wherever we go outside.

Riley and Lester always enjoy hanging out on whatever new thing might be lying around.

The gulls usually don’t pose quite this nicely when we’re cruising by.

For the past few nights I’ve been taking Spot down to the dock to sit on the swing and enjoy the night sky. This was from the 19th, the first night.

Ir’s funny that it’s the first day of fall because it’s a lovely cool day and I’ve been back at the digging up the evil rhizomes. I feel like I’m close to the end but then of course there are millions more of them under the soil when I start jabbing at the ground with my garden fork. It rained two and a half inches two night ago so the ground is no longer super hard but now instead it’s quite clumpy and muddy and wet. Oh, the fun I’m having.

Ok then,

Mrs. Hughes in the fall.