School bus, Home

Early on a murky Thursday morning, with the threat of rain and maybe even a tropical storm hanging in the warm and humid air, I trekked down to the millpond to continue my ongoing battle with the beavers that were plugging up the opening of the dam. Of course, overnight, they'd filled in the opening I'd cut, so I did more excavation and restored the flow to the parched stream. On my way home, I heard a rumbling coming towards me and soon enough, amidst the swaying Fox Tail grass heads and the increasingly colorful Poison Ivy leaves, I spotted the surest sign of fall: the first school bus in action. School for the local kids actually started yesterday, but today marked my premier sighting of the passage of the seasons. Of course, there's more of astronomical summer, and true summer weather, left, but once the yellow buses start appearing, you know what's ahead.