Fall, elk, and chopping wood

Fall is here with crisp days, cool nights with everything starting to change to yellows and golds. We haven't reached freezing temps yet, but I bet it happens in the next two weeks. Our now gorgeous hanging baskets are still up until then, and the hummingbirds have mostly left for Mexico. We have a dozen or so sticking around, but the chill will send them away too.

Backtracking a bit, to right before we had our company. We are continuing on the try new restaurant quest, and went to Brick Cellar bar & bistro in Gunnison for their Tuesday sushi night. This place is celebrating its 10th anniversary and we've never stepped foot in the place. They have a lot of live music nights (this wasn't one of them) lots of good wine by the glass for decent places, and sushi was better than expected (we're pretty picky having had great sushi in other areas).

Lots of work happening in our woods, and happily not by us, just paid by us. Two local guys are spending days cutting up wood that's fallen outside our fence.  It probably hasn't been touched in 25 years. We now have enough wood for lots of winters, and they're only clearing a couple of acres. Unbelievable.

Amazing sight yesterday. An elk standing in the road as we went out the front Star Mt. gate. It didn't move as we inched in the car around it, and knew there had to be an issue. We NEVER get this close to an elk. In fact, our guys cutting up wood, also saw the elk and said it was limping, but they felt it wasn't a serious limp, so hopefully it made it to a resting place to heal up.

The cows are still with us, probably for a month.  They are fat on Star Mt. grass and spread out all over. I can't deny, it will feel good to fling open our gates again.

brown then gray, who knows why one changes first

The deer are with us in bulk now. Every morning there are at least half a dozen chomping away on our remaining wild grass and wildflowers. They are in the middle of the coat color change which always heralds the coming of fall and winter. Only ding dong Flap is eating the day lily leaves however. They freeze back to the ground so it won;t hurt anything, but deer are not supposed to like those - only Flap...

I leave in a couple days to help take care of Penny for a week. Their wonderful day care person is out of the country right now for 3 1/2 weeks! Happy to fill in of course! Tiffany and Penny come back with me the following week for some vacation time at Star Mt. Happy, happy about that.