Lovely September

I love September!  When things are going well weather wise, this month simply can't be beat.   So far so good. We have been enjoying wonderful warm temperatures during the daytime, then cooling at night for cozy sleeping.  I might even get the tomatoes to ripen. I live in hope.

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Mid week saw cousin Lois and I bundling her Jack Russell and my Border Collie into my Rav 4 and heading south on Highway 2 to the Blue Trail in Southern Alberta for a visit with cousin Darrel.  Darrel and Flory's house overlooks the Rockies - and yes, that is snow you see on the tops of the mountains and yes, the sky really is that blue.  And yes virgin prairie grass still exists.  Libby and I hiked for miles through it to an abandoned shack and back.  The harvest is mostly in and it looks like a bumper crop everywhere.

We ventured down to Waterton Lakes National Park.  It was chilly but sunny and the wind ...well, the wind always blows in Waterton but it was lovely anyway.  For me Waterton Lakes is a very nostalgic place.  My dad used to haul our 24 foot trailer down to the campground right in Waterton village every summer and we spent most weekends down there hiking the trails, boating on the big lake, dancing at the dance hall on Saturday night.  It hasn't changed all that much although the dance hall is gone, and the theatre is now a restaurant.  The lake is still freezing cold.  Brrr.

The sunflowers were growing in a garden in Hill Spring - a small village on the way to Waterton.  We couldn't get over how tall they were and how full of bees they were.  I was a tad jealous I admit, as my lone sunflower was highjacked by a greedy rogue squirrel last week before it could even ripen. He climbed the stock, chewed off the head and disappeared with it.  I found the poor broken curled up sunflower head abandoned a couple of days later outside our fence. It wasn't ripe.  He pounced too soon.  So now a headless giant sunflower stands bravely by the back fence.  How tragic is that!  I hope that squirrel gets a tummy ache. 

The skull is a bit of whimsey on Darrel's fence post.  There is no way that skull and those antlers belong together.
It was a lovely, relaxing trip.