This just in from Henretta Splain -

Hi Fred and Jane,

Evidently Dave's dog came home. Just wanted to let you all know. Some good news!

That is good news. Apparently "Reuger" is a smart dog and knew how to make his way home. Hopefully he wasn't hurt too badly.

These rainy days our cat, Woody, gets a little frustrated. He usually goes out pretty early in the morning and on good days, we may not see him for several hours. On rainy days, he doesn't stay out very long, and when he comes in from outdoors he asks to go into the garage - like the weather will be better if he goes out that door, or goes to the back door and after peering out at the rain for a long moment, he gives it up and decides not to go out. It always takes him a while - like two or three minutes - to figure out it's raining at all the exits. His next decision is where to take a nap. For a while he was always in my chair in the living room. Then I fixed a bench in front of the window for him where he could look outdoors and (hopefully) realize it was raining, or he could watch birds or whatever; then for a while he favored the bed in the guest room, but now he takes his day-long naps on our bed. As soon as it begins to get dark, the routine begins again, and we are busy letting him out and answering his insistent knocks until he's figured out his best option is probably the litter box in the basement.

While Woody napped, Fred and I went for a walk between showers. I wasn't up for a long walk, but once outside, it was actually pretty nice. There are a lot of leaves on the ground - wet and mostly brown or pale yellow - and the air smelled fresh with a tinge of wood smoke (probably ours). There were not many people out and about, but we saw our neighbor, Barbara Pupino - she and Mike live down the road across from the Encarnacions, and we complimented her on how nice their house looks. They've recently painted it and replaced the roof, and it looks very nice. She said the red was getting pretty dull and after a great deal of deliberation, they chose a pretty blue - Barbara called it "Cape Cod blue." We like it a lot.

Further down the road, we noticed Helen Morrison has had some trees cut between her place on the hill and the road. I expect that improves her view of the pond. As we were going by, a nice fat partridge took flight from among the tree stumps.

After the wind and rain today, there aren't many leaves left around the pond. Even the tamaracks aren't as lush as they usually are. They are normally our second foliage season, showing bright yellow against the dark hillsides after all the maples and birches have dropped their leaves. This year the tamaracks near our place seem to have already dropped their needles. We'll know for sure once the sun comes out and things dry out a bit.

Where the brook goes under the road through the big culvert in the dip near Keenan's (used to be the Smith cottage), there was a washout from the storm we had at the end of May. It took a while for the town to fix it. The holes are filled now but we were surprised today at how high the road is above the brook, especially on the lower side towards the pond. We're hoping the town puts up some guard rails there before winter. The road is steep on both sides of the brook, and it's not unusual to find it slippery there, so if a car happened to skid there's nothing there now to keep it from careening over the banks. Towards Keenan's, it would be quite a drop into the brook. The upper side isn't quite as bad, but either way it could be dangerous. It seemed to us it was a bigger drop now than before the road washed out.

We found there was some nice color in individual trees, and got this picture of a young maple near Gardner's. Even with no sun, it was still pretty.

I guess everyone knows about Pete, the Moose who won the hearts of many of us a couple years ago. Here's that story: Pete's Story

Sadly, Pete's story doesn't have a happy ending. Somebody goofed badly - actually, it seems as if there may have been a number of "goofs," all handled badly. Lots of people are saddened by the whole thing, especially his benefactor from the beginning, David Lawrence. Here's a link to the end of the story: Pete the Moose is Dead

A quick recap of precipitation reports from Joe's Pond, using "Water Year" beginning Oct. 1 and ending Sept. 30, 2010 and 2011:

Total precipitation: 50.78" in 2010; 71.15" in 2011.
Total snowfall: 138.5" in 2010; 190.2" in 2011.

We are just beginning a new "Water Year" as of October 1.