Everyone knows it's windy....

Those words to that old song "Windy" kept coming to mind today..... we had awful winds all day long... windy enough to keep the chickens hiding under the bushes. The little birds stayed up in the trees, and Gatsby didn't want to stay outside this afternoon. Especially since he wanted to stay outside last night and the temperature dropped about twenty degrees after midnight...... not exactly purr-fect weather for a Texas cat.

We woke up to a cold morning... cold for here, anyway.... must have been about 60 degrees and being that yesterday's temperature was up near 90, this morning felt like Arctic air had been dropped into the hills. But we went walking anyway.... down the hill in the wind, up the second hill with just a little wind, then up the next hill with even more wind. Made us walk a little faster, that's for sure. Wasn't it just 99 degrees and we were saying how crazy we were to be walking in such heat? Oh well.... this little cold snap won't be lasting too long and then we'll be back to our warm and toasty temperatures.

Our side yard now has three small cage-traps scattered under the pecan trees..... my husband is waging war on the squirrels, raccoons, armadillos, skunks, possums, and whatever else is out there during the night. The cage-traps are baited with nuts and fruit.... and the squirrels have been over and around each of the traps-- not one has gone into a trap, of course. They must know that my husband would be driving them over to the next town and releasing them in the woods by the lake........ guess they prefer our huge pecan trees to lakeside living. Last night, a skunk came walking right down the driveway as if he lived here.... my husband went outside, certain that the skunk would go into the trap. Not a chance. The skunk is still out there somewhere and waiting till dark to walk down the driveway again. Watching that skunk in the driveway last night, I kept thinking of Peppe LePeu in those old cartoons.

I've been boxing up the Christmas gifts that I've been wrapping for weeks..... I intend to have them boxed up and ready for mailing way before Thanksgiving comes. After Halloween is over and those decorations go back into the closet, out will come the Christmas trees and Santas.... and I will be too busy Christmas-ing the house to be wrapping and boxing gifts. I just don't know how people wait till the first weeks of December to start shopping and wrapping and boxing....... they must not have a big family. If you only have a few people to buy for, I guess you can wait till December comes. Or maybe they just like the hustle/bustle (translation: stress) of last-minute shopping. Not so for this little elf.

7:30pm as I'm typing this, and it's dark outside...... I hate these shorter days..... and we'll be turning the clocks back the first weekend in November.... a sure sign that summer is over. Oh well. I'm sitting here with a sweater on.... I don't much like that either. We had an awfully hot hot hot summer, but even so, I'd much prefer the higher temperatures to the sudden cold snaps and windy days that scatter branches of the pecan trees all over the lawn.