Late summer flowers

*Yellow Garden Spider* (Argiope aurantia)

OK. The rainy remnants of Sally are keeping me indoors, and it’s time to try this again.

So far today, I have learned (from WordPress support) that some of the functions I have used to edit and display images are not available in the “improved” WordPress. I guess I’ll get used to how cumbersome the new process is, and you’ll need to get used to the how WordPress decides to display my posts.

How about more pleasant things, since most of my time is spent enjoying life in the Hollow? Summer is on the way out; we are finally experiencing more normal (whatever the means these days) temperatures that are expected to drop into the low 40s at night this weekend. Some leaves have begun to fall, and the late summer/early fall flowers are decorating the meadow and roadsides with yellow and purple.

The deer continue to come.

One morning they were joined by a hen turkey, who tried to persuade her poult (the only one I’ve seen all year) to join her.

And it finally did.

One morning Bambi showed up with no velvet on his antlers. This is the first time one of “my” bucks has lost his velvet overnight. Bro also lost his overnight a few days later. (The images below lets you slide from one to the other to compare. Thought I’d give it a try.)

I was surprised to see a small fawn last week; the older fawns are getting big and losing their spots.

I haven’t seen many turtles lately, only one buried in the mud for a few days last week. I expect to see more tomorrow after all this rain. The reptile I’ve seen most (around the house) are lizards—Eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus) and skinks, Southeastern five-lined skinks (Plestiodon inexpectatus) and/or Common five-lined skinks (Plestiodon fasciatus). And some of them are tiny baby lizards!

I’ve been working on this since right after lunch (with a break to make a rainy trip to the meadow to feed the deer), and now it’s almost dinnertime. I’m not giving up on the blog and hope to post again before too long.
UPDATE: And so I discover that the “gallery” below did not display correctly in FB or Safari, and the WordPress app doesn’t support editing it yet, either. Let’s try something else.