We had a busy summer, but now it's ending. Mr. Troutbend and Buddy the Interstate Cat are driving back to Las Vegas tomorrow, leaving early in the morning.

The last few days he (Mr. Tbend, not the cat) has been like a tornado doing projects, and it's not as if he didn't do anything all summer, these were the last little bits.

Yesterday he drained the water out of the pipes in the small rental cabin, then was up on the roof of our house putting chicken wire in the roof vents in hopes of keeping squirrels out of the attic. Every so often a squirrel will drop into the exhaust vent over our stove. It scrabbles around for a couple of days and then either escapes or dies in there, but I've never smelled a smell that would indicate it died in there.

Next thing I knew he was mowing the front lawn and then starting the pump in the river to irrigate the yards. Today he put chicken wire in the culvert so maybe the beavers couldn't go up there and cut down trees, started the tractor, and rotated the tires on his car.

Here is the wood he cut up the mountain a bit and carried down to the woodpile:


At the peak of summer we had more than 70 hummingbirds, and now are down to maybe 10 at our house, and 5 or 6 at the other cabins.