Fall is in full swing here in our valley. The leaves have completed their colorful show and are now performing their version of natures carpet, helping to protect the trees life giving roots from the upcoming chilly winter days and nights. Their color show was spectacular this fall. The locals tell me this was one of the most beautiful fall colors they have ever seen. They wonder if the warm winter or all the smoke from our 3 and 1/2 month long forest fires had anything to do with it.
Even the Turkeys are trying to find food anywhere they can. There can't be anything any funnier than a awkward Turkey trying to balance himself in a tree while eating berries from the small branches!
And the Deer have moved in to make sure they haven't missed any of my precious garden plants. They can trim things better than I can...Darn them!!! They are cute but after a few days of trying to clean their droppings out of the treads of my hiking boots I find it a little hard to think of them as cute!

The weather was so beautiful that JW and I took a Saturday afternoon drive up the East Fork of the Bitter Root River. I went with the intent of capturing some photos of some elk and maybe moose as they seem to be a little scarce right now. You can imagine how excited I was when we came around a corner and saw this small herd of Long Horn Sheep grazing in a pasture. And as you can see I was able to get fairly close to them and they really didn't seem to care. Of course, this young ram was busy trying to keep the young bucks away from his herd of females.
This is a Clematis that is growing on the end of your back deck. Even though the temperature has been down in the low 20's a night, it just keeps on blooming! Boy, that's determination!!

The wild turkeys that have moved into our neighborhood have discovered that we knock the apples out of our tree each day and now come and visit us several times a day. It has become such a routine that when they are about a 1/8 of a mile down the road from us they all start to run this way. Can you imagine a flock of about 30 wild turkeys running down the middle of a country road....it's quite a site to see. We are trying to remove all the apples from the tree before the weather gets bad enough that the bears starting moving down into the lower valley looking for food...they love fresh apples. Oh, the country life!

I have been a bit under the weather this week so I haven't been into my blog mode. And I have also received my laptop back from Son so I have spent a lot of time uploading my photo shops back into the computer. And I was thrilled to get to upload my photos that have been on Cd's for more than a year that my old computer would not accept. So it has been fun seeing all of those photos again. And that of course gives me a whole new set of photos to work with in my online photo store!

And JW has been busy in his Machine Shop this month. He's a happy man!

And we have been watching the Southern California wildfires very closely as we have several dear friends that are so very near to the fires. We hope the fires are over soon and everyone is safe.

Mystery solved!

The mystery of the odd shaped chimney has finally been solved. We had to go into Hamilton again and ended up driving by the same rock structure again, except this time we approached it from another angle. I was rather surprised to see this beautiful Italian type water fountain structure between the chimney and what is a fence, all surrounded by stone. Very charming...I wonder what it looks like on the other side of the fence...hmmm

I just had to have JW stop so I could take this picture. I have never seen a chimney on a house quite like this one. We were both puzzled at the reason for it to reach clear out to the street.
Now I think this is the perfect ranch name...as long as they really mean it!!

It has been raining hard since early last evening and I just looked out my kitchen window and this beautiful red bush no longer has it's beautiful leaves attached to it! With just a brisk breeze all the pretty colored leaves ended up on the ground. Maybe they will end up in the neighbors yard!!
Of course we ventured into our favorite candy store when we were in Hamilton for Apple Days. I was kind of good and only had a peanut cluster. (good?)

My attempts to upload pictures this morning have failed as the screen tells me the blog site is aware of the problem. So pictures will be uploaded later. But I recieved this in an email this morning...it kind of says everything!

MY LIVING WILL..............

Last night, my friend and I were sitting in the living room and I said to her, "I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."

She got up, unplugged the TV, and threw out my wine.

She's such a bitch.....

Okay, so I can't finger paint! But we sure had a great time at Kindergarten Craft Class!!! It's fun to do the things that you only did at a very young age and didn't appreciate at the time.

Our fall weather is holding and our walking group went on two wonderful hikes this week. Today we went up an abandoned forest service road and this was my very first hike in the State of Montana that didn't have a rushing creek beside it. We did manage to follow a very slow flowing quiet little stream that had many smooth beautiful pools in it. And the sun was shining and the trees had so many beautiful yellow leaves on them. I could have stayed there all day.

My walking group is scheduled to use the local trails in to the second week of December and we have walked in the rain and snow before so I am guessing this fall won't be any different. We just dress in more layers of clothing.

We traveled to Hamilton to see the Hamilton Apple Days Celebration. There were thousands of people there! The volunteer ladies from around the valley had put together 750 pies for the day. Most were already baked but they also had frozen ready to bake pies available. And of course we had to bring one of these delicious pies home with us!

These people are stirring us a batch of wonderful Apple Butter. They are making it right in the middle of the street during the celebration of Apple Days. It did draw quite a crowd. Apple Butter on toast...yum.

This was a very cute scene at one of the jams and jelly booths. Dog Lovers...what can I say! They were also pressing fresh apple cider and giving our free cider. Can't get any fresher than that. This brought back some wonderful memories of my childhood when we pressed apples to make our own cider to enjoy. Oh, the good old days.

The weather stayed beautiful for the entire day of this event so the live music was enjoyed by everyone and I can now confirm the rumor that yes, Huey Lewis was attending a music event at the *********!! I love this place.

Well, It looks like summer is saying goodbye here in Montana as the colors are changing even in my beautiful Hostas. It is amazing that this will already be our second winter here. This truly has been the busiest, yet the most fun filled year we had ever had.

The deer are growing their winter coats preparing for the cold days and nights to come. They are trying to eat everything in my yard and garden in their attempt to put on fat to help make it through the winter.
This is a sight just across the road from us. I have never saw so many glorious reds and brilliant yellows in the trees as we have here in this valley. I think it's Mother Natures way of charming us before all the cold and freezing snow arrives!

This is a nice Ranch name here in the valley. It sits on a hill...that is why the odd angle of the camera. But check out the back side of this sign........................
This is what you see as you are leaving the ranch. Very Clever! Must have been Roy Rogers fans. Okay, if you don't know who Roy Rogers is, ask grama. Sheez!

This is a recent project from my Adult Kindergarten Craft Class. It is a wine bottle (NO, we didn't get to empty them!!) and it is covered in masking tape with real autumn leaves showing through. The masking tape is then covered in shoe polish. Fun Project!

As we have been traveling around our neighborhood, we have realized that there are some ranches here with some very clever names, and some with familiar sounding names. As we see them I will photo them and post them for you to see.

The one above is a clever name...I wonder if there are kids involved with the naming of this one!
This is my very first project at my new Kindergarten Craft Class this week! I have never worked with Playdough so I found this a lot of fun! I think there is a lot more laughing and giggling going on than serious work!

WINTER SEEMS TO BE ON IT'S WAY

This is our view off the back deck this afternoon. Yes, the snow is getting closer and the temps are not rising very much throughout the day.
But the crisp temperature does bring us a lot of beautiful color here in the Bitter Root Valley. We were so busy moving from Washington State to here last October that we had missed a lot of the wonderful color here. So the views from our front windows are extraordinary to us.

Yes, we too find it hard to believe that we have resided in the wonderful State Of Montana for one year already. It seems just like yesterday.....

This is a few of my Hen and Chick succulents that did very well in my flower bed by the back deck. All of the plants are surrounded by so many new babies to transplant next spring. It has been such an amazing wonder to discover all the beautiful plants that grew and bloomed so well this growing season.

Our local School District sponsored activities have gotten under way again this last week. My "walking" group has walks on Monday mornings then again on Wednesday mornings. So many wonderful sights to see in the wonderful forest around us. And on Monday evenings I attend a Menopause discussion group. I have met a few new friends at the evening group. And on Wednesday afternoon just after the walking group, I attend a Kindergarten Craft Class For Grownups. I can hardly explain how much fun us "ladies" had at this simple class. There was no kindergarten class when I started school and it seems my memory doesn't recall doing very many fun things in class those first few years. Several years later my sister was in Kindergarten and I was envious. And several ladies in this group experienced the same thing in their childhood so you can't imagine the laughing and giggling that went on during this session! Our first project was to make 'something' out of Playdough. Imagine, a group of ladies that have never worked with Playdough! I constructed a very cute elephant with a shade palm tree near by. There were many varieties of objects. What fun! Our second project involved masking tape and shoe polish. Yes, I know, sounds strange. I will get a photo of this project and post it tomorrow. Make this life Grand!!

Hurrah!!!! The county is finally repairing the washout on our road! When this section is repaired it will cut our distance into Darby by 3 miles! That's wonderful. This part of the road has been washed out for about a year and a half. So we're pretty happy about all of this.

As soon as the earth is replaced up to the level that I was standing on when I took this picture, we will be able to use the road at last!

Another beautiful hike with the girls. A beautiful smoke free day. What an improvement over the air we had to live with this summer.

We are getting more snow in the mountains near us every evening. And frost has hit the yard and many of the flowers that were still in bloom have fallen victim to Jack Frost. Summer seems to be gone for the year. Darn.