Sunday, 7:25 am: It’s cool, clear and crisp. That sounds like fall to me. Of course in northern Maine that could apply to most seasons. Our usual amount of work has been slowly changing, but not clearing brush. There’s always a lot to cut and later try to figure out whether to burn it, or run it through our chipper-shredder. At least when we have snow cover all that will abruptly end, but the other work with home and pets will continue.

Our firewood appears to be seasoned enough that creosote will not be a problem. It’s had all summer to dry out. Our stove and chimney have been cleaned with our chimneysweep equipment. They are, for the moment, clean. My chimney cleaning skills have improved over the past nine years. By now I’ve lost my ineptness [I am good at that] and I don’t have wire brushes and fiberglass rods rolling off of our two-story roof anymore. Fortunately I never rolled off the roof – not yet anyway. Ouch! I don't want to be part of the food-chain just yet.

It’s hunting season once again, and hunters with their orange vests are all over the woods. It sounds like a small intermittent war going on in the distance. So far this year, they’re not hunting directly in front of our house. From my observations of these guys, some are very lazy. It’s all they can do to get out of their truck, snuff out their cigarette and waddle and wheeze into the woods. This sort of eliminates the stealth and cunning skills that are part of hunting. There are, it seems, no Daniel Boones around here. Of course this is a very biased conversation with myself. Not surprisingly, it is also one-sided, and I always like my own answers.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 32.5° [F.]

Barometer: 30.116 & rising slowly

Humidity: 80%

Wind: Calm

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: Clear

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 30.3° [F.] at 5:28 am

High wind: 12 mph at 12:56 am