Or, as we like to say, “Oot and Aboot”.

Yesterday we went and got our library cards.  I’d never been to the county library here – I’d always gone to the one in Charlottesville, but it’s quite a hike and there’s never any parking.  As it turns out, our local one is pretty great anyway.  Emily and Neve both came away with books they were excited about, and I even scored a great deal on used books for sale.  Check it out:

The soft cover ones were 25 cents and the hardcovers were 50 cents.  I couldn’t resist the lamb one, since it looks like a Southdown, my favorite.

Neve loves this hamster book she found.

I was also happy to see the library carries a lot of the books we’ll be reading next year for home school.  The craft section sadly was rather pathetic, but you can’t win ’em all, I guess.

The temperature was a little lower today than what we’ve been dealing with so I decided to do more than just the standard cursory check on the gardens, and I was pretty happy with what I saw.

The tomatoes are doing well.

There are little butternut squashes starting to grow in.

And corn!!!  I have corn!!!!!!  I really can’t wait for that to be ready to harvest.

My nasturtiums are doing very well this year.

So is the cilantro.

Other things are thriving around here, too.

Plenty of deer pass through to drink from our stream.

Our stream happens to be home to these guys, as well.  That’s about a 4 inch long crayfish that was swimming around out there this evening.

Dragonflies are likewise in abundance.

Unfortunately, with the cool critters some the not so cool.

This guy was hanging out on the back deck.  Until I shot him full of this:

And he wasn’t even one of those big ones.

Now if I could only locate those two huge frogs that are hiding out in my garage before they die in there.

It’s Wild Kingdom around here for goodness sake.