It's no longer 'early September' but seems like the month has barely started, and October will be here too soon.

By this time most years we'll have had a killing frost, and then warm up for Indian Summer that lasts into October. This year and last, no early frost, so summer is extended. The light changes and the garden flowers fade, but there's still enough of them to brighten things up.

The resident summer hummingbirds left weeks ago, and the few we have now are passing through on their way south. Any day now we won't see any, but will continue to put the feeder out for a few days past that in case some straggler comes along.

We take the feeders in at night and get up early to put them out because the bear comes looking for them. We haven't seen it in several weeks, but it has been at the rental house because our tenant had bags of trash in an open trailer with no bear deterrent, and of course the bear got into it and shredded the bags. He shot at the bear with rubber buckshot the other night, then drove over here to see if the bear came this way. I don't know where it went.

We still have one baby fox that visits every night, and an older fox that I call The Babysitter because she spent time with the fox family. She is spookier acting than the fox parents, but was here during daylight the other day. I don't know if we will ever see the mother & father fox again. They might have been hit by cars on the highway, eaten by the mountain lion, or moved to another territory. Time will tell.