The simple pleasures of the day (please add your own)

Smoothing my homemade, organic hemp "sand" mattress, then sinking into the fresh new smoothed surface, digging my toes into it and thinking I made this!

The summer season flew by but I’m thankful for a productive harvest from a little garden in a rocky pasture, new young hens laying beautiful eggs, my newly added cutting garden for bouquets! Looking forward to Fall and the woodstove and crisp days & nights.🤗

Nancy Reading wrote:Spotted a new (to me) bird in our treefield today:

source
The goldcrest (which has the delightful latin name Regulus regulus) is Britain's smallest bird. The adults weigh only 5g. It was certainly tiny, but quite bold, showing no particular nervousness at my presence, just hopping around in the birch trees. I could see it's yellow/red crest quite clearly. The head blends into the body with no neck, so cute! Apparently they do breed locally, so now that my trees are giving a good amount of shelter (and probably providing food via insect larvae as well) I hope that this one will find a mate and stay. Of course I didn't have my camera with me so had to find an internet photo to share.

It is totally adorable!!  Must be nice to hear it's little song.  Are they still coming around your area this year?

Lynne Cim wrote:Smoothing my homemade, organic hemp "sand" mattress, then sinking into the fresh new smoothed surface, digging my toes into it and thinking I made this!

OK Lynne, So now you will need to tell us all how you made this!  It looks wonderfully comfy!!

I was out gardening and noticed a fresh green husked walnut rolling into my yard from under my back gate.
Then tiny, lightning-fast, gray-furred hands yanked it back out of sight.
😁

Denise Cares wrote:It is totally adorable!!  Must be nice to hear it's little song.  Are they still coming around your area this year?

I did see the Goldcrests earlier in the year - still not able to catch a photo of them though. The wrens and robins have the loudest songs for little birds.

Getting a report from the field that the little duckling that needed a night in the incubator is happily hiding under mom with its two hatch-mates! One is lonely, two is better, three is a little family.

Almost completing a build on a peg loom, in a few hours, that would have cost hundreds, to purchase. (I did cheat a bit, though - beyond using materials already on hand, I did buy the 4 dowels, @ $7@.) Now, working all these fleeces and alpaca blankets will go much faster and easier!

Purple mushrooms!

I don't suppose they're edible though!

Very pretty, and as always, best left alone unless one has a veritable local fungi expert around who can positively identify all the possible harmful species like it that grow near you!

A quick search suggests they could for example be Inocybe geophylla var. lilacina which can cause lots of nasty illness, and potentially be fatal.

https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/inocybe-geophylla-lilacina.php

I grew giganti beans this year, the vine is still out there, the last of the beans on it I hope will dry. The vine is beautiful. Before it started to get cold, we had a hummingbird who'd come daily to the blooms.

I couldn't find giganti beans sold as seed, so I bought some from a gourmet food company. We ate most of the package and I planted a few....

That vine makes me happy.  I love going out and looking at the huge pods every day. I hope they mature/dry before we get a hard frost or 10/15 when I will pull the vines.

We had tree work done early this spring. My veggie garden this year made me happy.  Some things just didn't work: the old cherry tomato seed that did grow (very little of it) never flowered. Some of the potatoes/onions just rotted because of all the rain. But, I did get potatoes, onions, leeks, and green beans, shell beans, and some for drying.

This was the first time, ever, that the garden produced enough food to affect our food budget. The giganti vine, one red onion, a seeding lettuce, and the chickory which gives us radicchio every spring are the only food plants still in the veggie garden. The rest of it is weeds which need to be pulled and the beds mulched or beds which have been mulched.

When I pulled the pea trellis, I planted garlic in the bed, so we'll have more green garlic and scapes next spring. And we might have enough bulbs next year? I was shocked, the farm stand where I've been buying my weekly produce has garlic stalks for $4.99 each??? EACH? That seems insane for a crop you basically have to do nothing to get..! Everytime I think about that I take another head of garlic out there and tuck it in the ground.

Just being in the great outdoors..its a bmessing

Finding a plant that you thought was gone for good!

Mioga appears at the end of the summer

Japanese ginger: Seems to turn up right at the end of the season when I've given up on it!

I love watching birds fly in unison, murmuration.  

They are like the ocean waves in the sky.  Peaceful, happy-go-lucky, free, floating.  

I can be on my way home from a physical job in 100 degree weather, see one of these and perk right up...smile and my day is better.

My heart always lifts as I watch them.

Starling Murmurations

When everything is going sideways, and a flash of color catches your eye, and unexpected blooms of a gifted plant reminds you of your friendship with someone very special - like May Lotito, and her sweet spirit.

Happy Thanksgiving! The Thanksgiving cactus is always on time.

I was taking videos of the front ditch and accidentally came across one secret chicken nest. From tge color, the eggs are from a buff Orpington. She got out of her broodiness a few weeks ago, lossing so much weight. I am glad she is hefty and laying again.

...my strawberries are blooming!

Lavender fields forever ....

This must be the year for verbena (not my pictures, though this is what my place might look like)

Prairie Verbena is an amazing native perennial. It is drought tolerant and highly deer resistant for those areas that are suffering under increased deer pressure. This beautiful low growing trailing plant likes dry to medium moist sites and can be found along roadsides, pastures, and open grassy areas often covering acres of ground.

https://seedsource.com/prairie-verbena/

My back field tends to create a vortex because of its shape and the tall trees all around it.

Watching the Maple Keys being blown off the tree and dancing in the field, flying higher than the tree itself, was delightful!

We're expecting more wind today, so I may get a "rerun"!

Today I stopped by the elderly crossing guard after dropping my kid off at school, and I gave him a box of chocolates for keeping all the kids safe. He was very touched by this, and I could see him still smiling as I drove away. When I saw my kid this evening, he asked if I gave the crossing guard a box of chocolates that was red and had a name starting with the letter M. I said, yes I did. He said, "My friend, Silas, walked into school today carrying the box of chocolates. He said the crossing guard gave him the box and told him to have a nice Christmas. He brought the box in and shared it with all of us."

So my box of chocolates made me happy when I gave it to the crossing guard. It made the crossing guard happy to receive the gift. It made the crossing guard happy again because he now had something to give to someone to make them happy. It made my son's friend, Silas, happy to get the gift. It made Silas's friends happy that Silas shared the gift. It made my son smile, because he figured out it was from me. And it again, made me happy, to know it made so many people happy today.

I hope this story just made you happy.  If it did, that just made me happy.

Working outside in the cold and coming in to a roaring fire in the fireplace.