The end of summer. How can it be? I am an autumn person through and through. If there were nine months of autumn and one month each of winter, spring, and summer I would be pretty happy with that. But this year, no one I know, myself included, feels ready to let summer go.
Given the many days of Burrito’s recovery (now thankfully healed and returned to his family), followed by the many days of hazardous, smoke-filled air (now thankfully cleared away), we are all beside ourselves with gratitude at the sense of ease, joy and freedom we’ve been having this week. The chimpanzees’ have continued to enjoy lunch forages on Young’s Hill and we’ve all been basking in the final gifts of summer, each of us sighing along with summer’s last breath:
Jody holds her reign as “Farmer Jo”:
Negra enjoying her lunch with a view:
Foxie:
Burrito:
Jamie:
Annie:
Diana mentioned on Saturday how we’ve been anxiously awaiting the chimpanzees’ grapes to ripen and have finally been able to harvest these beauties. Can you believe these gorgeous things?!
I went out to harvest some for dinner, but Annie, Jody and Burrito insisted they should be served immediately, garden to belly:
Everyone squeezed (politely, somehow) into the raceway (the chute that gives the chimpanzees access to Young’s Hill from the greenhouse) and lined up for their serving. Bunches of grapes aren’t the easiest things to serve through the caging so apologies for all the caging shots. But, their faces! A fleeting summertime gift.
Jo!! My favorite photo, look at her eyes! 🙂
Foxie:
Burrito’s tactic is just shoveling them in as fast as he can, naturally:
Missy and her sweet little runner’s legs:
(And fiddlesticks, I just realized that my photo of sweet Annie with her grape cluster didn’t take, and Negra chose to stay in her nest, though she did receive a few grapes via delivery).
Meanwhile, I could hear Willy B blowing raspberries from the other side of the grapevines, in the chute, where he and Honey B were anxiously waiting for their serving:
Honey B:
In the past couple of days that we’ve been harvesting the grapes we’ve learned that Mave in particular LOVES them. She chose to wait inside for hers and when I rounded the corner with them her hair was standing on end in sheer excitement (pilo-erect) making her glorious fluffy self even floofier! Here she is gazing adoringly at them:
Somehow the grape feast, being a hot ticket event, went off without a hitch. For the most part that is. Turns out the seven were not in a sharing mood and had a lot to say about the three partaking in the feast as well. That’s alright. I don’t like sharing, say, my cookies, so I get it. 😉
A bonus photo of Jamie enjoying her beloved boot book in her nest:
It’s been such a beautiful day. It’s nearly dark already and as I type this I hear geese flying overhead and the raspberry patch is a chorus of frog song – I suspect from the little guys I rescued and put in there earlier today. Betwixt and between. Wherever are you, and whichever season you happen to be saying farewell to in your part of the world in welcome of the next, I hope there’s beauty there. I’m convinced it’s there for all of us in one form or another. We just have to keep an eye and an ear out.
