November Hill farm journal, 39

We are waiting and hoping for rain today. It's extremely dry right now, and while that seems to be agreeing with horse and donkey hooves, the pastures need a good deep drink.

Leaves are falling, acorns are falling (and being browsed by busy squirrels, deer, and horses), and the sky is the autumn blue I love best.

The pollinator garden is totally planted as of yesterday. I'll write more about that later.

Right now the sun has broken through the clouds, birds are singing and tweeting through the open front door, Corgis are chomping down on their Himalayan yak milk dog chews, and the cats are sleeping in various spots. It's a nice day.

A couple of sad things:

Baloo's basic obedience class and Bear's Canine Good Citizen class were both canceled due to not having enough people/dogs signed up. I'm sorry we won't be going; Bear loved his basic obedience class last year and also his Canine Good Citizen class. We were unable to take the final test to get his certificate due to my schedule, so I had hoped going through that class again would be a good review and we'd take the test at the end. Baloo is doing well with basics - still tweaking his "down" and working on the "stay" but he is smart and will work hard to earn his treats.

The sadder thing is about the kittens. We learned that to be truly safe bringing in feral kittens to our home with other cats we would need to have the kittens tested and retested for FeLV and FIV. Until the second test results were done (in a few months) we would have to keep the kittens separated from our other four cats. Unfortunately we don't have a way to do this for the length of time we'd need to and so we've decided to let the kittens go to another home. I'm not sure what we would do if they ended up testing positive. It's generally recommended that positive-testing cats not be housed with those who are negative for these two diseases.

Sending out good thoughts to New Orleans area as Hurricane Nate moves in.

Sunflowers in the kitchen

Fall break, grandma is here, kittens are coming!

Daughter's fall break is officially underway, my mom is here until Monday, and the kittens are coming Sunday afternoon after being spayed and neutered today.

Life is good.

Choose what you focus on, shape your world view

"We tend to place a lot of emphasis on our circumstances, assuming that what happens to us (or fails to happen) determines how we feel. From this perspective, the small-scale details of how you spend your day aren’t that important, because what matters are the large-scale outcomes, such as whether or not you get a promotion or move to that nicer apartment. According to Gallagher, decades of research contradict this understanding. Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to. If you focus on a cancer diagnosis, you and your life become unhappy and dark, but if you focus instead on an evening martini, you and your life become more pleasant—even though the circumstances in both scenarios are the same. As Gallagher summarizes: “Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”" from "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World" by Cal Newport

Bear sightings all around us!

I've been getting reports of bear sightings within a few miles of us last week and last night, so now am wondering if some of the middle of the night barking sessions might be something more than a stray cat or coyote!

Last night's sighting revealed 4 strands of electric fencing surrounding a chicken coop and yard ripped out and bear scat full of corn left behind.

Thinking we need the Maremmas NOW!

Thinking maybe we need to cool it with the composting in the back yard for awhile.