Was that snow? Maybe

Maybe I had a few flurries of snow last night. Mostly, though, nothing fell from the sky. Wind dominates my landscape at the moment, dropping ever more leaves from the trees. The wind will likely ruin the peak of fall color around me. The leaves will come down before they turn brilliant. Ah, well, such is life.

Last evening Dog and I took a spin around the ponds. Walking in the evenings now is turning into a race with sunset. The evening was the kind of weather I think of as a true October sky—angry dark clouds, crisp temperatures, a wind that bites. Usually, I don’t have to wait until the end of the month to experience that.

This October has been rather normal for its temperature—an improvement over recent years---but it has also been unremittingly clear with days on end of cool, windy days and blue skies. Much of the northeast has been the same. All I have to do is read the hawkwatching "dailies" to hear the complaints of counters suffering from "blue out." Blue skies are the bane of hawkwatchers. The undifferentiated sky is both hard on the eyes and makes it hard to see or even spot migrating hawks, who can fly much higher than they can when a little cloud cover holds them lower. Looking at teeny tiny little dots is not my idea of good hawkwatching. I’ve reached the age where I simply can’t hawkwatch in blue sky anymore. If I do, I won’t be able to drive home or walk down off the mountain.

So last evening Dog and I walked and then simply sat, enjoying the weather. He wandered off after a few minutes, nosing the ground and then he started to roll. Now, if you own a dog you know this is not a good sign. I was up in a flash, pulling him off his rolling spot, but it was already too late. He’d found some fox poop to roll in. And he stank. So I took him for another run, hoping to blow the stink off of him, at least a little. Eventually, I couldn’t put it off any longer, as darkness was closing in. My evening was spent giving a doggie bath—not how I wanted to spend my evening. And Dog wasn’t pleased either. He loves water, but he can do without the soap.