Saturday, September 20, 2014

Acorns, Apples and Berries

First frost yesterday, and all our squash and tomato plants are gone.  The leaves are turning, and fall is definitely here!  Wild apples are falling, squirrels are chasing acorns, and there are berries on lots of shrubs.

The squirrels don't always seem to be successful in eating the acorns they chase, but they chew them off and they fall on the ground.

There are two mid-size red oaks the squirrels seem to like the most.  When I walk past with the dogs we hear the acorns and small branches falling to the ground.

The ground ends up littered with leaves ....

... and acorns.


There's a wild apple tree across the street; apples have been accumulating on the ground for 2 or 3 weeks now.

There are berries around too - these are Highbush Cransberry,

and these are a small cherry tree.  All among the accumulating signs of fall.

P.S.  Over the past week I've seen an astonishing increase in pageviews on my blog, but almost all of them are apparently coming from viewers in the Netherlands, a country from which I've had very few visitors before.  They now represent 75% of my blog visitors!  Can anyone suggest what's going on here?  Is this just a glitch in Blogger statistics?  Has anyone else experienced such unusual changes in viewers?

7 comments:

  1. We have a Chinkapin Oak Tree between our house and the neighbors and it is losing acorns quickly. They are a mess!

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  2. I haven't looked at page views for ages, but will do so, Lovely acorn droppings?/ as opposed to animal ones, and frosts, yes they have been elsewhere too, so you are truly into autumn properly. Keep warm, cheers, Jean.

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  3. This comment is purely anecdotal and not supported by any detailed research but it seems to me that the acorn crop is more prolific this year than for many years. I have noticed several trees where the sheer weight of the acorn crop is breaking the branches. The squirrels should be well provisioned for the winter.

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  4. You are more autumnal than we are yet, although we are having quite a cold rainstorm at the moment. I still love the changing seasons.

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  5. I've been noticing how busy the squirrels are right now. They've got a lot of work to do stocking the winter larders.

    I'm not sure sometimes with page views. It might be possible that one of the bloggers that follows you adds your blog to their sidebar of favourite blogs, if they have that, and if they have a lot of followers in the Netherlands, it can drive up your page views. Check your stats again for the blogs that source your own page views, and it might give you an idea.

    I have noticed in my writer's blog in the last couple of months a lot of views from the Ukraine, and it might come more from the occasional snarkiness I've written about Tsar Vladimir.

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  6. My blog's stats do not show that anomaly but I do not have nearly the audience of your blog. Wonderful photos capturing the harvests of autumn.

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  7. Sounds like fall certainly has arrived for you already. No frost here yet.
    Haven't looked at blog statics for a while so couldn't say. I'm going to go have a look.
    NICE photos.

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