Chocolate Porter

Fall is the time of year when everything starts to come in pumpkin spice flavor. Except here in PA where two of this state's best known brand names, Yuengling beer and Hershey's Chocolate, joined to create "Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter". It was time to restock the refrigerator in the "Man Cave" when I found this limited edition brew at the local distributor's. It is somewhat sweet and has a mild taste of a Hershey Bar.

Late Bloomer

I was checking my apple trees today in search of candidates for an apple pie when I noticed these apple blossoms starting to bloom at the top of the tree.

Autumn Sunset

Today's beautiful fall weather was topped off by a gorgeous autumn sunset.

How To Survive Deer Season

The start of archery deer season is only a few weeks away and this young buck's survival strategy is: Don't look like a trophy wall hanger!

Bears Everywhere

It might be the same bear, but on September 5th we had a large black bear at the gate to our cabin property and now I have game camera photos of bears at some of our other properties.

This photo was taken at our West Hill property on the 15th.

Two days later, on the 17th, a bear was at our barn property.

Grafted Pears

Back in April 2018 I grafted some Bartlett pear cuttings from a neighbor's tree onto some of the wild pear trees on our property. Most of the grafted cutting survived and last year we got a couple small pears. This year we got several large, delicious pears off 3 different trees.

The pears from the wild trees are small, hard and not very tasty.

The grafted pears are in the back and some of the wild pears from the same tree are in front.

Bumblebee Meets Mantis

The cooler weather this morning may have slowed the bumblebees but they were still busy collecting nectar from the Sedum flowers at our house.

A very small ant, in front of the bumblebee, is also busy collecting nectar.

I have found several of these praying mantises in the past few days. If you look on the flower below the mantis front legs you'll see body part from where it was collecting bumblebees.

Wildflowers - New England Aster

Marking the unofficial end of Summer, the New England Asters are starting to bloom.

Weekend Visitor

I was checking the game camera at the gate to the cabin and see a sizable bear was in the neighborhood Sunday morning. The blurred object at the bottom of the photo is a deer running by the camera.

European Hornet

I was doing some yard work at our cabin and found a nest of European Hornets (Vespa crabro).

The entrance to hornet's nest was through a vent window near the peak of the cabin.

The hornets had chewed a hole in the window screen and constructed their nest in the loft area of the cabin.

European Hornets are very large and can grow to 1.5 inches, but are not overly aggressive. I was able to handle several of these hornets, without any problems, while taking photos.