Last flowers, first frost

After having just Journey and Bessie as our only fosters for several weeks after my return from Kansas, we now find ourselves with five: Journey, Bessie, Sam, Jeb, and now former foster Daisy, who has been with us since Monday while her mother recovers from an illness. It's a full house again with all 11 dogs indoors at night. I've been working out daytime play groups and locations:  Max, Theo, and Daisy in the dog yard, maybe with Sam (I'll try her out there tomorrow); Journey, Bessie, and Jeb the Lab out in Daneland; and Della Serena, Maya, and Arby indoors (maybe with Sam), with frequent trips outdoors to run, play, and bark at the others.

Tuesday was sunny and windy. The wind had the beneficial effect of drying the mud and the deleterious effect of making all the dogs super stupid for the day. 

We had our first killing frost Tuesday night. Consequently, the flower pictures I had taken the day before were the last of the season.

Wednesday was another beautiful, sunny day, but with less wind. I took Maya and Sam out for a hike.

Fuchsia is one of the showier flowers, it's almost gaudy really, but I always liked this 

color combination. They did very well in the round bed in the center of the driveway this year.

That's Daisy running in front of my mower, Della in the background.

Daisy enjoyed the pasture time but didn't venture too far from the dog yard.

Max

Daisy

Theo

Serena

That's Della with her head above the tall grass in the lower pasture.

Della

Sam started off our hike by trying to pick up and drag along any large branch she found.

I found and offered her reasonable sized sticks that she could carry, but she wanted only

those that were too big to be practical. An obvious size queen.

She dragged one of them along for a while until it poked me in the back of the knee.

I stomped on the branch and pulled her off of it. She eventually gave up on the idea.

Sam refused to play with Journey, Bessie, and Jeb the Lab out in Daneland this morning,

but after this afternoon's hike with Maya she is having a very energetic play session with

Maya in my office this evening.