A low in the 50's

My thermometer said 59 this morning. Finally, a break from this Fall heat wave! I actually turned off the A/C and had the windows open all day, although it's pretty stuffy now.

The oak tree leaves are falling off much earlier than in years past. I read in Neil Sperry's column it's because of the severe drought for a few years, then a very rainy spring and summer. It's just wrong to have to rake leaves when it's above 80 degrees!

We've been watching the squirrels alot lately. They started out digging up pecans and eating them. Now they are burying new ones. They've gotten very bold about coming down from the trees into our yard, sometimes right in front of Molly. She usually ignores them, although once she immediately dug up the pecan that the squirrel had so carefully buried and ate it. Gabriel notices them all the time running across the electrical wires and moving around the tree branches.

All of a sudden, there are no cardinals in our yard. I did a tiny amount of research to try and find out if they migrate, and so far all of the sites say they are non-migratory. When I did the post a while back about seeing the hawks in our neighborhood and how neat they were, I should have done an addendum post. One of the neighborhood gentlemen who also walks in the mornings told me soon after I did the post that he can't stand having them in our area because they've taken to eating the cardinals and blue jays. These are the birds that stand out to them in daylight. I was pretty upset, and still am not really sure who to root for. After all, the hawks have to eat too. But they better not have come after the cardinals around our yard!