In my last post I said that I thought temps would not get into the +20′s again, but it looks like I might be wrong. The weather men are predicting temps of 23C over the holiday weekend which will be great. For once I will be willing to be proved wrong!

Talking of weather, on Tuesday we had our first overnight frost. Only a light frost, but a frost none the less. So we are in the month of anything goes! When I look back on this blog to this time lat year we had temps in the high 20′s!

Gas prices are falling at last and we only paid 97c per litre yesterday, the lowest we can remember for a long time. Whilst the girls were visiting us in September the gas prices were fluctuating so much that we paid anything from $1.18 to $1.40 per litre just in the two weeks they were here. It has been going down since then to now being around $1.05 in Belleville, but the Mohawk gas stations are always cheaper and this is where we managed to get it at 97c.

Since we arrived in Canada in July 2006, we have seen prices range from 72c to $1.40!

On a completely different note we had a coyote in the garden this morning. Unfortunately he did not stop around long enough to get a photo. This is the second time we have seen one in our garden, although we have seen them along the sides of roads (both dead and alive) and can hear them most nights howling away.

A sign that winter is indeed on the way is the arrival of the snowbirds in the garden. Their real name is dark eyed junkos but are known as snowbirds. I spotted a single bird the other day and since then many more have arrived.

Here are some snowbirds with a sparrow and a chickadee.

We can now add another animal to our garden critter count – a Coyote. Yesterday I just happened to be looking out the window when I saw a coyote walk along the back of the garden. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first and ran to hubby who was in the garage. I shouted “There’s a wolf in the garden”.

He came to the window but unfortunately the wolf had vanished. After calming down I looked it up in our animal book and know that it was a coyote not a wolf. We knew there were lots around as we hear them howling at night, but to actually see one during the day was really amazing.

On the subject of dogs, this week we heard from the family who took our puppy from us. They say she is doing great and has grown lots. They sent us some photos, which was really nice. We are really happy to know that she is living a good life and obviously enjoying it.

She is getting big now!

According to the weather we are in for a huge storm tonight and 20cm of snow, so we have battened down the hatches and tested the generator and are prepared. It is ironic that before we had the generator, through the summer and autumn months we had half a dozen power outages. Since we had the generator installed, we haven’t had one! Not that I am complaining, I prefer not to have outages, but can you believe it?

Oh, I nearly forgot. We have been watching one of our squirrels frantically collect nuts and bury them all over the garden. But the other day we were watching him and he kept disappearing under our upper deck. We went downstairs to look out the window, which is under the deck and saw what he was up to.

There is an old discarded bird next under the beams and he has literally filled it with peanuts until it is overflowing. It was very funny watching him. See pic below for the result.