We walked down to the building site this afternoon and found things have moved ahead steadily - looking good. That's Dale Bird as he was cleaning up around the work site. We didn't talk with them much, but they did say they are hoping the weather will give them a break . I'm guessing tomorrow may be about it, according to the weather forecast. Wednesday and Thursday look like rain again. Today wasn't that great, but we didn't actually have rain - just there wasn't much sun.

We got several pictures, though. Lots of the people who have stayed around for the foliage are packing up to leave now. Our foliage was pretty much a bust this year. Not as bright as usual and it didn't last very long, thanks to the rain and wind we had last week. Now we'll wait for our second color display when the tamaracks turn.

Woody, or cat, has spent most of the day recovering from his antics over the weekend playing and showing off for us in the woods and tree tops. We think he pulled a muscle or a claw as he's been limping today and has stayed pretty quiet. He's better tonight, so we think by tomorrow he'll be his old playful self again.

The bluejays are active now, feasting on the crab apples in our little tree. I haven't seen many squirrels at the tree, but that may be because they know Woody lives here and keep clear of the place until winter when he's inclined to stay inside and watch them from the living room window. He wouldn't have bothered them much today.

I was awakened quite early this morning by some crows up in our woods. There seemed to be quite a conversation going on between one far up in the woods and one big old guy in the maple outside the bedroom window. I don't know if this is one of them or not - we got this picture when we were on our walk, and this one was quiet, just playing look-out for some of his friends, I expect.

We have a really old maple tree on on the roadside by our lower lawn that has been crumbling over the years, dropping one huge branch after another until there was just one fairly large piece of the trunk standing. Each year it burst forth with buds and leaves and withstood the winter winds, the ice and heavy snows, and became a condo for numerous woodpeckers and squirrels. There were some flowers growing in part of the stump some six feet up, and there are several conks attached to the lower trunk. We noticed today that last big section of the old maple is down. Fortunately, it fell onto our lawn, not into the road, so no real damage was done. Fred will be busy for a few weeks cutting it up for fire wood, though. In spite of the main tree being long since gone, this last section looked robust all summer. I'm sure that old tree is at least 100 years old - we're sorry it finally gave up, but there is at least one fine young maple growing straight and tall beside it.