Enjoying What the Bears and Birds Missed

Daddy-O and I started to winterize around the Girdwood house. Snow on the top of Max’s Mountain Saturday morning is one of our annual signs to shift our seasonal lifestyle. We drained and unhooked the garden hose, dried and stowed the mountain bikes, emptied the terracotta planters and put the picnic table under shelter so it doesn’t get plowed into matchsticks by the front end loader that manages our snow load in the parking area. We were also on squirrel patrol, since Kelly, one of our renters mentioned there is a squirrel now running back and forth in her bedroom ceiling (probably stashing pine cones for winter) which is between our upper unit and the ground level unit…not good.  Sealing off some probable entrance points in the old logs on the side of the house and knowing my husband as I do, the squirrel doesn’t stand a chance! Winterizing only lasted so long as the beauty of Fall overtook us. Before long we were all playing in our woods eating the sweetened blueberries that the Bears and Birds missed, explored the upended root den of a huge fallen Evergreen, found new growth Hemlocks and generally appreciating the vibrant colors of Fall. Tauzer Schnauzer chased critters, chewed sticks and was just glad to be a Girdwood Dog. We laughed at all the grass seed and Blueberry bush leaves that had stuck to her. We even thought she was cute all stinky and rain soaked, until I noticed that the brown thing on the top of her forehead wasn’t a leaf at all, it was a gross SLUG!