The weather here has been a bit wild. First it’s warm and sunny and then it turns cold. Add onto that we have had a lot of rain. Two days this week we have seen almost an inch a day. I think Fall can’t decide what it wants to do. Something about the weather this year has made a huge crop of mushrooms sprout up all over the property.

In the first picture the mushrooms are huge. They are a little smaller than a dinner plate. Then in the second picture a puff ball looking mushroom grew up next to the dinner sized plate ones.

The first picture here reminds me of the coloring in some snails. The second picture I thought was neat. One big parent mushroom and little baby mushrooms gathered all around.

When I look at this first picture I see a floating sting ray. Lee said he thought it looked like a jelly fish. The next picture looks like a sea shell to me. Like a Sand Dollar.

There were quite a few of these little yellow headed ones. My camera decided that it was going to pretend that it couldn’t take the color yellow. The second picture reminds me of a snail shell again.

I loved this little mushroom. It reminded me of summer and blowing dandelion seeds.

Of course I had Jack and Jasper following me around while I was trying to take pictures. Jack is getting much bigger. Her eye we think is also getting a little better. I feed her some Lysine mixed in with soft food. Lysine is supposed to help herpes infections and is what we used with Jasper and his herpes eyes.

Our holly tree is in full berry bloom. I like how many birds it attracts but I hate all the spiny leaves that it sheds. Too bad I couldn’t use it’s berries for something useful. I could make a berry jam that would cause extreme diarrhea but I suppose but that doesn’t sound fun. With the weather being so wet we haven’t got a good fall color in the leaves this fall. The rain and wind knocked them off early along with stunting the glorious color. Last year the leaves on the ground were awesome color. This year not so much…

I couldn’t help myself. Really, I tried to resist the urge for over a week. Edgar’s doggie mohawk was just begging for a punk color. I did restrain myself and didn’t do pink. He is very thankful for that.

I was bored, what else can I say… Edgar needed shaved due to pitch and mats he acquired in his fur during the house project. So I decided to give him a new hair do. I think his mohawk fits him as Edgar ‘thinks’ he is mister tough stuff.

We had a new stray show up a week ago. We were out by the chicken pen and Lee made mention that he thought he heard a cat meowing. I told him that I didn’t hear a cat. Then I walked over to look in the barn and sure enough there was this little black cat meowing it’s head off. After a little coaxing it came over and I was able to pick it up. The poor thing was all bones and was light as a feather. We weren’t staying in the house at that time so we put out food and water for it every day when we came over in the evenings.

The little black cat we are guessing is around 4 to 5 months old. It is also blind in one eye and a female. I decided to call her Jack after the pirate called One Eyed Jack of course. My sister complains that I call all my girl animals boy names. I’m just lousy at girl names though and can’t seem to help myself. Jack was at one time someone’s cat as she is beyond friendly. Stray cats just don’t get that way unless someone spends a lot of time handling them. I’m also at a loss on why someone would dump her since she is so sweet. I guess their unwanted loss is our unexpected gain. In just the week that she has been living in our barn she has put on a lot of weight. I plan on letting her be an inside/outside cat if she wishes. Next week I will bring her to the vet to see if she has feline leukemia along with getting her eye looked at.

I decided to hug Ruffle Bob the last two nights. I took her out of the chicken coop to chill with me. I’m just sure she was loving it and not freaked out of her little mind. Really! Lee says that I am just trying to relive my memories as a child when I (and my siblings) would swing on the swing set with our chickens or ride around on our bikes with them on the handle bars.

Here you can see the ruffles in Ruffle Bob a little better. It’s only on the back of her.

So after much petting and poor little Ruffle Bob trying to figure out what she did to deserve this I decided to put her back and get another chicken to hug. This one is the chicken that we think might be a boy but aren’t really sure. He looks really thrilled to be hugged also don’t you think?

We had a cat adopt us recently. She doesn’t seem to mind that we have dogs. In fact she rubs against Edgar every time she can. She is a big tree climber and rodent exterminator as we see her constantly hunting and find dead bodies around.  We decided to call her Piper as when she first started hanging around she meowed at us all the time.

The feral cats that came with the house decided they were going to hang out at the neighbors house. Piper we figure is just a new discarded cat someone dumped. Several neighbors have told us that a lot of cats get dumped around this area. Lee and I both are pretty pleased to have a rodent slayer around as the mice and gofers abound around here.

We’ve had “unnamed puppy” for 10 days now, so it was high time that we came up with a name.  Early contenders were Fergie and Jules.  However, I’m (probably) getting a  Ferguson TO-20 tractor and didn’t want my dog named after a tractor.  I liked Jules (as in Jules Verne) or Joules (as in a Watt/Sec) but I was afraid people would think Jewels (ughh!).  I found that multiple sources recommended dog names that are two syllables ending in a long vowel or a soft ‘a’.  This led me to Haiku, which I still like, but Robin hated.  We considered Cedar or Sugi (Japanese for “cedar”).  I found a variety of Gaelic names that I liked, but all of them ended up being similar to (or identical) to people’s names that either Robin or I knew.

For almost 24 hours we settled on Georgi as a name both of us liked.  It’s based on the root name of George, a Greek name meaning “farmer”.  That seems appropriate for a farm dog.  Unfortunately, the next day I noticed the similarity to a certain recent president and instantly soured to the idea …

So, what did we finally name poor unnamed puppy?  Aggie!  It had been on our list almost from the beginning.  It sounds cute but not terribly common (it’s the 1,764th most common name according to an L.A. survey).  Aggie is a shortened form of Agatha, a Greek name meaning “good, honorable”.  Hopefully that describes her! 

Sorry for the lack of pictures.  I take most of the pictures, but I also take out the dog the most.  Cameras and puppies don’t mix well.  We’ll try to rectify that.

We picked up Lee’s new puppy today. She has been really good and not one accident from her. Edgar on the other hand…well lets just say he was the one that had the accident. Lee doesn’t have a name picked out for her yet. Hopefully he will pick one out sometime this next year. She is an English Shepherd.