H.B. to me!

Hello!  Guess what day it is!  My birthday!  Happy birthday to me!  I went for a little walk this morning because it was so beautiful outside.  I took some pictures:

First of all, I looked in my garden.  We've had a few nights of frost, so almost everything is dead and I couldn't hold off any longer on picking my pumpkins.  Impressed?  This spring when I was feeling very Martha Stewart-y I thought it would be a good idea to plant my own pumpkins for the kids for Halloween.  I pampered those stupid pumpkin vines all summer and this is all I got.  They are going to be a BITCH to carve, I can just tell.

Next I headed down the hill to the way-back yard.  Pretty huh?

Aside from the whole potential-early-death-by-bear-attack, we are very lucky to live here.

Now I'm in the woods. Beautiful!  Part of me is a little afraid of running into the bears, but the mature part of me says, "Grow up!  They are more afraid of you than you are of them!"

Then I looked down on the path and happened to notice bear tracks.  Can you see the claw marks?  At this point I'm getting a little freaked out.  But the dog was with me, and bears are afraid of dogs, right?  All is fine.  Move along.

Beautiful!  I love nature!

Right about here I was thinking how great it was to be alive, and how happy I am.  Then I looked over at my dog as she stopped short and pricked her ears up and listened intently to something ahead of us.  Then she turned around and BOLTED in the opposite direction.  Panic time!  I didn't know I could run that fast.  I caught up to the little jerk on the deck. 

It looks like she's yawning, but she's actually laughing at her hilarious joke, and saying, 

"You should have seen your face!"