Lovely autumn weekend

Knowing I may not be able to ride for awhile after having orthroscopic surgery Monday, I rode in the flatland along the river for almost three hours yesterday.  We are fully into autumn now:  The colors are vibrant in many places, the air is bracing, and it was the kind of day you dream of.

Look closely near the bottom of the picture:  a beaver has been hard at work.  See the stump and chips he left?

That's the road leading away from the river bottoms.  Usually there are no vehicles around, but yesterday some fellows had been target-shooting down in the flat-lands, and they passed us on their way out.  Hearing the guns made me somewhat nervous, since I had no idea where they were, or in which direction they were shooting.  Blue flinched a little at the first shots we heard; I'm sure he had flashbacks to July 4 when the bottle rockets chased him.

My daughter's family was here for the afternoon and evening:  she brought all the ingredients for lasagna, one of her specialties; Cliff worked till two, but hurried right home for his favorite meal.  Amber, my son's oldest daughter who has been spending most weekends here, now has a working computer at home; so we likely won't be seeing her as often.  Monica is happy to keep the spare computer warmed up and in use, though:  She watches AOL videos by the hour, singing along with the punk rockers, using lyrics we Googled and printed off for her.  She's not even what I'd call pre-teen yet, so we have to find substitutes for a few of the words she isn't supposed to say.

Our two pigs are eating like... well, you know.  Here they are at the trough.  I'd love to hold one and stand on the scales and see how much weight they've put on in a week.  The trouble is, I'm not sure I could hold one now!  I weighed Mandy that way yesterday and barely managed to restrain her long enough to see the numbers (she weighs 38 pounds).