Labor Day has always signaled the end of summer for me.

Here in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the change in the angle of the sun slows down our plants and many years we've had a killing frost in the first half of September.

Our resident summer hummingbirds have left, and now we have transients moving through on their way south.



We will see the last of them within the next two or three weeks. The bear has been here a couple of times and we chased it off, but it will be back. It was a wetter than normal summer, so there are berries on the bushes, if only the bears will seek them out.



Mr. Traveltales had robotic surgery for his infected gallbladder and is well on the way to full recovery. He had to drop out of his fall bowling league, will probably take it up again in January unless some other thing goes wrong with him.